The rain blew across the Mall, shaking the leafless trees lining the road. Car headlights shimmered through the gloom. To the east, a twin-hulled skyliner thrummed its way upriver, following the twists and turns of the Thames. Its navigation lights blinked red and green. As he watched, it passed behind the forest of cranes towering over Westminster, where the government buildings were still being rebuilt, rising like misshapen, blocky phoenix eggs from the craters left by the Gestalt’s bombardment.
How many times had this city rebuilt itself? The inhabitants seemed used to chaos and ruin; in fact, they seemed to revel in their resilience. From the destruction wrought by Boudicca, and then the Great Fire of 1666, through to bomb attacks by the IRA and Al Qaeda, via the Zeppelin raids of the First World War and the Blitzkrieg pummelling of the Second, Londoners had always been fiercely proud of their ability to keep calm and carry on, even in the most trying of circumstances. And these past two years had been no exception. Faced with a baffling multiverse of potential threats, the capital was doing what it had always done: going about its daily life with scarcely more than a shrug and tut. As long as the Tube ran, the people were happy. Whereas other cities such as Pompeii, Petra, Hashima Island, and Detroit had fallen by the wayside during London’s two thousand years of history, the Mother of All Cities had simply endured, and always would.
Looking down, Merovech remembered the glass in his hand, and raised it to his lips. Set against the ravages of the past, the damage left by the Gestalt—a few dozen bomb craters, some demolished buildings—seemed minor and ephemeral, a hiss and a pop in history’s sizzling pan; but that was only until you remembered the three thousand dead bodies that had been pulled from the rubble. Three thousand innocent men, women and children who had been caught in a conflict they couldn’t possibly have foreseen or understood, killed in a surprise attack.
He rinsed the whisky around his teeth. His wife had been among them. At least, she would have been his wife if she’d lived. The date of their wedding had been set, and the preparations had been under way. Then a Gestalt dreadnought appeared in the skies over London and showered missiles on Whitehall.
When the assault came, Julie had been in a car, on her way to shelter. She’d been crossing Westminster Bridge at the exact moment the parliament buildings took their first hit. A swerving lorry crushed her car through the stone parapet, into the Thames.
Merovech drained his glass.
She hadn’t stood a chance.
With her gone, he had nothing. He had no mother or father, no brothers or sisters, hardly any friends. He felt like a refugee from a vanished land—alone, and the last of his kind. Even the damned monkey had disappeared. All that kept him going was his duty; the same duty he’d once spurned and sworn to resign.
Three thousand had died in London, but similar numbers had also been killed in all the other cities that had been targeted. In the aftermath of all that tumult and loss, the survivors craved stability. They desperately needed a leader they could count on; somebody whose familiarity would provide permanence and comfort in a world turned outlandish and unsafe; somebody to be a focus for their grief, and embody their hopes for the future. And so he toured the cities that had suffered in the attack; he cut ribbons at construction sites and waved for cameras; he visited schools and factories and spoke about hope and faith and the importance of rebuilding the country; and then, when he came home, he locked himself in his office, away from the public gaze, and drank whisky until the footmen came to pour him into bed.
He watched the twin-hulled skyliner until it disappeared. Then he turned to the bottle on his desk, ready to refill his glass. As he unscrewed the cap, he heard a soft knock at the office door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and his personal secretary stepped into the room.
“Your Majesty.”
“Amy?” The neck of the bottle clinked against the rim of his glass as he refilled it. “What are you doing here so late?”
“We have a bit of a situation, sir.”
Amy Llewellyn still wore the same clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day, but now she’d discarded her suit jacket, loosened her collar, and pushed the sleeves of her blouse up to the elbows.
“A situation?” Carefully, he replaced the bottle on the desk and fastened the cap. Then he picked up his drink. “I thought I’d asked to be left alone.”
“This won’t wait, sir.”
Fatigue clawed at him. He gave them body and soul during the day. Why couldn’t they leave him in peace in the evening?
“What is it?”
Amy blew a loose strand of hair from in front of her face. “We’ve received a message.”
He sighed. “Are you sure it can’t wait?”
She swallowed, and shook her head. “It’s from your mother, sir.”
Merovech’s fingers tightened on the glass. “My mother’s dead.”
“Quite so.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“She made a back-up, sir.”
Merovech felt his knees begin to shake. He’d seen his mother die, blown to fragments by her own hand grenade. He leaned against the desk. “Where is it? Where’s it calling from?”
Without asking, Amy turned over a clean glass and poured herself a drink.
“You’re not going to like this, sir.”
He watched her put the top back on the bottle, and noticed her hands were shaking.
“Just tell me.”
Amy swallowed nervously, and cleared her throat.
“The transmission appears to have originated on, um, Mars.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HAIRY FRIENDS
C
ASSIUS
B
ERG’S SPINDLY
frame lay strapped to a bunk in the airship’s infirmary. Victoria looked down at him with distaste. Even in sleep, his leering smile remained fixed and permanent.
The Smiling Man.
Once, on her world, he’d been a figure of nightmare and terror, a killer with the face of a clown and the dead eyes of a snake. He’d haunted her nightmares. He’d killed Paul and tried to kill her. And then she’d thrown him out of the
Tereshkova
’s cargo bay, and thought it was over. She’d thought he was gone for good, little suspecting she’d run into another version of him, in an alternate version of Paris, on another timeline altogether.
This new version of Berg looked even more like a corpse than the first one had. His skin was pale almost to the point of translucence, and had been stretched tightly across his scalp and cheekbones. Metal staples held it in place, each at the centre of a circle of red and puckered flesh. His black overcoat reeked of mildew and stale cigarettes.
She looked around at the dozen or so monkeys crowding the bed.
“Wake him up,” she said.
A grizzled capuchin tapped Berg on the forehead with the flat side of a meat cleaver.
Victoria looked down and straightened her tunic. It was a red one with gold buttons and a silver scabbard on a white silk sash, and it had once belonged to her elderly Russian godfather, the Commodore. It was the only thing of his to have survived the crash of his old skyliner, the
Tereshkova
; and it had only survived because she had been wearing it at the time, having donned it for luck in the battle against the Gestalt.
For this confrontation, she had left her head bare, displaying her scars—scars the other Berg had given her during their first clash.
On the bed, the new Berg’s eyelids flickered. He blinked up at the hairy faces and bared fangs around him and jerked against his restraints.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m happening, Mister Berg.” Victoria stepped forward and bent slightly, bringing her face a little closer to his. “I trust you remember me from this morning?”
“Let me go.”
Victoria shook her head, keeping her expression immobile and unfriendly. “I’m afraid not. I have some questions for you.”
“I mean it. I have powerful friends. If—”
“As you can see, I have angry, hairy friends, Mister Berg, with sharp teeth and bad tempers. Now, let’s take all your bluster as read, shall we? Because, from where I’m standing, you’re in no position to be making threats.”
He glared at her.
“When I get free from these straps, I
will
make it my business to kill you.”
Victoria wagged a finger. “If you get free from those straps, Mister Berg, these guys will
eat
you.”
She brushed at a speck of dust on her tunic, making the medals clink and jangle, and let her other hand rest on the pommel of her sword. Around the bed, the monkeys chattered and whooped, and did their best to look fierce and hungry. They brandished swords and knives. One, a brawny howler monkey, carried an old fire axe.
Berg looked around at them, and stopped straining against his straps.
“I won’t talk.”
“Yes, you will.”
He cocked his head. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because we’ve done this before, you and I.” Victoria tried not to shudder at the memory. “Last time we spoke, you were dangling out of the back of a skyliner and, when push came to shove, you told me everything I needed to know.”
Berg’s brows furrowed. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
“We’ve met before, Mister Berg, on another timeline. You may have killed the Victoria from this world—you may have killed a whole lot of people for that matter—but, where I come from,
you’re
the one who’s dead.” She rocked back on her heels and folded her arms. The overhead light twinkled across the frayed gold braid on her cuffs. “So, keeping that in mind, I want you to tell me about your boss, Doctor Nguyen. We know he’s at the Malsight Institute; I just need you to tell me on which floor to find his office.”
Berg licked his lips, his tongue darting like a lizard’s, scenting the air.
“Go to hell.”
Victoria sighed. “Please, Mister Berg. This is your last chance to be helpful.” She looked around at the motley troupe of primates assembled around the bed. “Otherwise I’m going to have to ask my friends here to start getting creative with you.”
She gave a nod to the capuchin. The little creature had a swollen head, deformed by the artificial processors crammed into its skull, and a row of sturdy input jacks protruding from its back like the spines of a dinosaur. At her signal, it inched forward, raising its cleaver above the captive’s forehead.
Berg’s flat and expressionless eyes looked up at the blade.
Then, with a roar of anger, he sat up. The leather straps at his wrists stretched and snapped. With the speed of a striking snake, he clamped a hand around the little monkey’s neck and snapped its spine like a used match.
Aghast, Victoria threw out a hand.
“Stop!”
But it was too late. With an angry shriek, the rest of the troupe fell on him. Berg writhed and lashed out with his hands and feet, but they were too numerous, too close. Blades flashed. He used his forearm to block one sword, but two more skewered him through the ribs. He cried out, sounding more indignant than hurt, and tried to swing his legs off the table, but that only exposed his back, and a gibbon with patchy fur took the opportunity to sink a foot-long carving knife into the hollow between his shoulder blades.
Victoria stepped backwards to the door, hands covering her ears.
“Stop,” she cried again, but they couldn’t hear her over their own frenzied screeching. Horrified, she watched Berg sway to his feet. He had a sword stuck right through his chest, and she could see both ends of it. However, it didn’t seem to be slowing him down. With a single bone-crunching backhand, he slapped a Japanese macaque against the wall, crushing its skull.
“Stop!”
His smile turned in her direction and their eyes locked. The monkeys were just an inconvenience to him. He had promised to kill her, and he intended to make good on that vow. As if in a nightmare, Victoria drew her own sword. Berg moved towards her as if moving through water, monkeys hanging from his arms and legs, weighing him down. As she watched, he reached around and pulled one of the knives from his back. He held the red, slick blade by the point, and drew his hand back, ready to throw it.
“Goodbye, Miss Valois.”
Victoria flattened herself against the door. She didn’t have time to access her internal clock. She’d have to rely on her natural reactions. But he moved so
fast
...
Behind him, the howler monkey leapt from the bed. Still in the air, it swung its axe. Howlers were among the largest of all monkeys, and its arms were twin cables of elastic muscle. Hearing its cry, Berg glanced around, and the blade caught him across the bridge of his nose. The top of his skull came away like the top of a boiled egg, and he collapsed, dragged down and submerged beneath a tide of biting, clawing, stabbing beasts.
CHAPTER SIX
KISHKINDHA
B
ALI SAT CROSS-LEGGED
on a sun-warmed rock, waiting for the leopard. His tail twitched. He knew the big cat was stalking him, and had been for some minutes now. He was at the upper limit of the jungle, where the trees grew sparse and petered out like a green wave breaking against the volcano’s curving flank. Below, he could see most of the island and, beyond its treetops, the narrow strait dividing the island from the rest of the peninsula. Sunlight danced on the water. A couple of miles from where he sat, smoke rose from a clearing, marking the position of the stockade where the other members of the monkey army, gathered and brought here by Ack-Ack Macaque and the
Sun Wukong
, awaited him.
Humans, it seemed, had uplifted at least one primate on every parallel world visited by the airship. As soon as they had the technology, they created an intelligent ape or monkey. Privately, Bali wondered if they did it because they were lonely. Once, the humans had shared their worlds with other intelligent hominids, such as
Homo erectus
and the Neanderthals; but then those species had died away, leaving
Homo sapiens
home alone, with only themselves to talk to.