CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CORONAE OF IRIS
SHE TOOK THEM back to the wrought iron table, and bade them sit.
“You may call me Founder.” She walked slowly around the table. As she passed behind each of them, she paused to sniff their hair. “I am the true leader of the Gestalt. The monkey you just killed, the one who liked to call himself, the ‘Leader’ worked for me.” Having completed a circuit of the table, she stopped walking and stood between her bodyguards. “I come from a timeline significantly more advanced that this one, and I am significantly older that I look.” Resting both hands on the umbrella’s pommel, she glared at them through her monocle. “So, I’d appreciate it if you showed me some respect. When I was born, Queen Victoria sat on England’s throne.”
Paul’s image crouched between Ack-Ack Macaque and Lila. He pushed his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose and stammered, “But, but, but that would make you two hundred years old!”
“Two hundred and four, actually.”
“How could you still be alive?”
“Technology, dear boy.” The Founder straightened up. “I have tiny engines in my blood, which constantly monitor and repair and renew. With their help, I might live to be a thousand years old.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stirred uncomfortably. “Bullshit,” he muttered.
The Founder gave a sigh.
“Do you remember my husband’s machines, the microscopic ones that turn normal humans into fresh recruits for the Gestalt? The ones you came here to stop? Didn’t you ever wonder why they were so much more advanced than the rest of his technology? I mean, airships?” She rolled her eyes. “Give me a hypersonic scramjet any day.”
Victoria Valois had been watching and listening quietly. Now she sat forward, her hands on the table.
“You gave them to him?”
“Precisely.” The Founder tapped the tip of her umbrella against the deck. “When I recruited him, he was little more than an escapee from a laboratory.” She smiled nostalgically. “I showed him how to move between worlds, and gave him the technology to build an army.”
“But why?”
The monkey laughed.
“My dear woman, why ever not?” She swept the umbrella around in a gesture that encompassed all the possible worlds of creation. “You humans are far too irresponsible and squabblesome to be allowed free reign.”
“And so you turn us into zombies?” Lila asked indignantly.
The Founder’s brow furrowed.
“Think of it as harnessing your potential, child, and turning it to less destructive ends. Sometimes being a grownup means being prepared to take responsibility for yourself, your friends and, if necessary, your entire world.”
High above, the grey clouds finally delivered on their promise. Rain beat against the glass panels of the airship’s nose. A few drops fell through the holes made by Ack-Ack Macaque’s Spitfire, and pattered down onto the uppermost leaves of the trees, dripping from there onto the deck’s wooden planks. On the ground below the warship, London lay battered and smoking. Lights flashed as emergency vehicles tried to push through roads choked with abandoned cars. People were cowering in offices and Underground stations, dreading the next bombardment.
Ack-Ack Macaque tapped his fingers on the iron table. He wanted to smoke, but didn’t want to risk reaching into his inside pocket for a cigar. He didn’t want the Neanderthals to think he was going for a concealed weapon.
“You mentioned a job offer?”
The Founder turned to him.
“Indeed.”
“Let me guess,” he pushed back in his chair. The metal legs scraped on the timbers. “You want me to join your merry band?”
“Would that be so awful?” She stepped up to him, so that the toes of her shoes almost touched the heels of his outstretched feet. “I know you must have been lonely. Macaques like us, we’re not solitary creatures. We need the company of our own kind. We need a place to belong. We need the comfort and security of a troupe.”
Ack-Ack Macaque pulled his feet away from her. He snarled, but he knew she was right. He could feel it as an ache in his chest. And yet—
“You’ve been alone so long,” she said. “But all that’s past now.”
He could smell her. Somewhere beneath the cotton and pearls, beneath the aromas of shampoo and perfume, lay the scent of a female macaque. The first female of his kind he’d ever met, and maybe the only one he ever would.
His nostrils twitched. Something stirred inside him, and he closed his eye, feeling dizzy.
He could go with her. It would be easy enough to do. He felt the soft fabric of the borrowed suit and tie, and visualised himself at the head of a Zeppelin fleet, with her at his side. He imagined holding her in his arms, and pictured the two of them in heat, mating in a frenzied mutual lust…
“No.” The word rolled like molasses from his tongue, and he opened his eye to banish the images playing in his head. “No, you’re wrong.” He looked around the table, at Victoria and Paul, and K8’s unconscious form lying on the deck. They were his friends, his comrades. His family.
“I already have a troupe,” he said, and snorted to clear the stink of her from his nostrils. His hands itched, painfully aware of the revolvers in the holsters at his hips.
She gave him a haughty look.
“I could make you a king.”
Moving very slowly, he opened his jacket and pulled a cigar and lighter from the silk-lined pocket. He’d made his decision and chosen his side. Now, all he had to do was get her fragrance out of his head, and the only way to do that was to smother everything in a tobacco fug. His hands felt shaky as he bit the end from the cigar and spat it onto the floor.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He paused to light the end of the cigar, and then spoke through clouds of pungent blue smoke. “But I don’t want your machines in my head.”
The smoke spread warmth in his chest, and he felt his head go deliciously light. Ah, he thought, that’s the stuff.
Looking distinctly unimpressed, the Founder pursed her lips. She reached up and adjusted her monocle.
“Better a few machines in your head than a bullet?”
Their eyes locked.
“That’s the deal, huh?”
“I’m afraid so. And if you’ve got any notions of somehow saving this world, you can forget them right now. The fleet’s already begun to dump its cargo. Within hours, the planet will be ours.”
Ack-Ack Macaque looked at his friends.
“And what about them?”
“They will join the Gestalt.” She peered around at them. “We will be enriched by their bravery.”
Ack-Ack Macaque shook his head. He’d already lost K8 to the hive, he’d be damned if he’d let them take Victoria as well.
He looked across at his boss, and noticed her eyes. The pupils had dilated into wide, black pits. Only a thin coronae of iris remained and he realised that, while he’d been talking, she’d taken the opportunity to slip into command mode and overclock her system. Her mind must be racing and her heart pounding, ready to fight or flee. All she needed was an opening.
Their eyes met, and an understanding passed between them.
“And as for you,” The Founder was saying, oblivious to this byplay, “either you come willingly, or you’ll be assimilated right along with them. The process works equally well on monkeys as it does on people.”
Ack-Ack Macaque drew himself up in his chair. He sucked in a mouthful of smoke and blew it in her direction.
“Sorry love, but that’s not going to happen.”
The Founder’s gloved hand tried to flap away the cigar fumes.
“And that’s your final answer, is it?”
“Not quite.” Under his chair, Ack-Ack Macaque pressed his bare feet to the smooth wooden deck, ready to spring. “There’s just one more thing.”
The female monkey’s eyes became suspicious slits.
“And what might that be?”
“Just this.” He screamed, and leapt. At the same time, Victoria surged to her feet, sending the heavy iron table flying towards one of the bodyguards.
The machineguns fired.