Windswept (35 page)

“Apologies,” sang Madolyn, giving me that tea-and-cookies smile. “Now, where were we?”

The old ladies looked at me. I looked at Banks. Banks looked at Nariel. Nariel just kept pointing both guns at me.

“I think I was unarmed,” I said, “and the person who wants me dead wasn’t.”

“Ah,” said Madolyn, looking at Nariel. “I think you can put those away, dear.”

Nariel flicked her eyes toward Madolyn, but the guns didn’t move.

“That wasn’t a request,” said Gricelda. She put up a hand, first finger aimed at Nariel and thumb held high. She brought her thumb down and said, “Bang.”

Nariel’s good eye rolled up in her head, and she collapsed on the deck.

“I do hate it when the help gets stroppy,” said Gricelda. “You think you’ve trained them, taught them how to behave, but then their brains get screwy and you have to bring out the big guns.”

“What did you do?” I said, nudging Nariel with my toe. She twitched, her lips quivering.

“Just a little swat on the nose,” said Gricelda. “Something we do with all of our misbehaving children.” She shot Banks a look so harsh he flinched.

“Now that that’s settled,” said Madolyn, “I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

“Indeed,” said Gricelda. “Especially after all you’ve put us through.”

“Me?” I said. “You’re the ones with the guns. What could I have done to you?”

“You got in the way, dear,” said Madolyn. “We had quite the orchestrated maneuvers planned, and you gummed up the works like jellybeans on an escalator.”

“Well, I beg your pardon,” I said. “Next time, I’ll be sure to consult your people, maybe send out some engraved invitations.”

“Would you, dear?” said Gricelda. “That would be
quite
helpful.”

“I think she’s being facetious, sis,” said Madolyn.

“One of her many talents,” said Gricelda. “All the more reason to put the cards on the table.”

“You hold all of them,” I said. “I have none.”

“Just the way we like it,” said Madolyn.

“Never bet against the house,” said Gricelda.

“Especially when the house has the guns,” said Madolyn.

“Bloody great guns,” said Gricelda.

“Look, if you’re going to kill me like you did everyone else, just do it, OK?” I said. “This is driving me crazy.”

“Kill you?” said Gricelda. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The pile of bodies in your wake,” I said.

“Which weren’t our fault,” said Madolyn. “Though, I must admit, you can’t make an omelette without smashing a few eggs.”

“And Lord knows there’s been plenty of that the past few days,” said Gricelda.

“Indeed,” said Madolyn. “We’re very impressed with your drive, your talent–”

“And your ability to kick some serious ass,” said Gricelda.

“But we’re getting off track,” said Madolyn. “We have a defective unit here, and we need a replacement.”

I looked down at Nariel.

“Oh, no, not her!” said Gricelda. “Your friend, here. Mr Banks.”

Banks looked at his boots.

“When we first recruited him, he was the most excellent employee,” said Gricelda.

“Rock solid with a laserlike focus,” said Madolyn.

“And now?” Gricelda clucked her tongue. “Flabby.”

“Fuzzy.”

“Sloppy.”

“I mean,
really
, Mr Banks, did you think we weren’t on to you?” said Madolyn. “Hiding in a fleet of mining ships... did you really think that would throw us off?”

Banks’s eyebrows beetled as he stared at his boot tips. He flexed his cheeks like he was trying not to puke. I leaned toward him. “
What
mining ships?”

“You should know about them, dear,” said Gricelda. “Fifteen LiaoCon Xinzang-Class mining craft, bound from Nanqu. Mr Banks had stowed away on one of them – and might have continued stowing away except for us catching up a few weeks ago.”

“Enough time to retrieve him and get our stories straight,” said Madolyn.

“And to cover our tracks,” said Gricelda. She chuckled, and flicked her fingers to the ceiling. “Boom.”

My mouth went dry. “You killed all those people,” I said. “They were going to Breach, they weren’t in your way.”

“Mr Banks should have taken that into account before he hopped on board,” said Madolyn.

“We did make Mr Banks explain to the crews what was going to happen,” said Gricelda, shaking her head. “Entropic cascades are supposed to be painless, but we felt a little forewarning was polite.”

“Next time, Mr Banks, you’d be better off nailing a resignation letter to your own forehead,” said Madolyn.

“Which you could still do,” said Gricelda, her face darkening as her smile stayed bright. “Might save us the trouble.”

“I think I’ve heard enough,” I said, leaning back in my seat.

“Of course, dear,” said Madolyn. “You must be quite tired.”

“Especially since you’ve missed your nightly tipple.” Gricelda mimed taking a drink, tipping her thumb to her mouth and her pinky to the sky.

I glared at Banks.

“Oh, don’t be harsh, dear,” said Madolyn. “Mr Banks couldn’t help it.”

“It’s his pai, yeah, I know,” I said.

“Precisely,” said Madolyn. “And it’s
yours
, too. And your interesting neurological issue.”

“We could have you fixed in a jiffy,” said Gricelda.

“Your hibernant was a test batch, one that short-circuited your posterior cortex,” said Madolyn. “Batch twenty-two-oh-one? The kind that came in gold bags?”

“There are remedies now,” said Gricelda.

“Treatments,” said Madolyn.

“Solutions,” said Gricelda. “Not halfbaked rituals and drinking distilled yeast excrement.”

“Though, I have to admit, I
did
like that one rum from the bar with the palm trees,” said Madolyn.

“More for you,” said Gricelda. “I prefer to have my endorphins the old-fashioned way: by plunging myself into life-threatening danger. Like now.” She eased the yoke downward. I looked up through the airship’s windshield and saw the lifter port looming large. “I’m going to let Maddie take us in.”

“Oh,
now
I get to fly,” said Madolyn.

“You need the practice.”

“I’ll show you practice,” she said, taking the controls and ducking us below the line of airships waiting to land.

“Better strap in,” said Gricelda. “She likes to land a little hot.”

“And unannounced,” said Madolyn. “Who has time?”

I could barely snap my harness closed before Madolyn cranked the throttle. Everything whizzed past us at gutchurning speed, and then she spun the ship around and cranked the lift turbines to maximum. The entire carrier shook and rattled, like a giant was going to tear it apart, and I could hear the coral steel lines that held the cargo cans scream as they stretched. My stomach threatened to leave my body via my eye sockets, but then Madolyn eased us into a landing berth, dropped the cans with a gentle
thud
, and put the ship down with an easy touch.

“Lovely,” she said, powering everything down. “Nothing gets the blood pumping like defying gravity.”

“One day, gravity is going to have a few words with you,” said Gricelda.

“Oh, pooh,” said Madolyn, unbuckling her restraints. “Landing is just like taking off, only backwards. Are you all right, Miss Mehta?”

“Fine,” I said, looking down at my hands; they were clawing at the seat cushions. Nariel had slid around during the landing, so one of her hands, still clutching a pistol, was right at my feet. I wondered if I could make a move before the old ladies did.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Gricelda from her seat. “What we did to her, we could
easily
do to you.”

“Right,” I said, sitting up.

“Now, dears,” said Madolyn from the hatch. “We have a lot to talk about, and not enough time to make it happen, so chop chop.”

I unbuckled and got up, getting one more glance at Nariel and her guns before walking through the hatch.

“Would you mind, Miss Mehta?” said Gricelda, pointing at Mimi’s prone body. “My back, you know. And the fact that I’m too senior to have to do that kind of crap anymore.”

For a woman who had looked so slight and frail, Mimi was heavy as hell. I got her over my shoulders, her armor clacking into the back of my head, and limped off the airship. Banks followed, carrying Nariel.

We had landed in a quiet part of the lifter yard, far away from the trains and cranes and everything that stacked cans on their trip up the cable. The dull roar of the traffic washed over the walls of coral steel that surrounded us, and I wondered if I could get a message out in the middle of all this metal. I wondered if the twins would pick it up and interfere with it. I wondered if they would just turn my brain to jelly.

Gricelda and Madolyn stood in front of the three cargo cans they had boosted from Partridge Hutong. There were a few blobs of hardened riot foam on them, proof that Soni’s cops could still hit a moving target. “Just in here, please,” said Gricelda, opening the door to Bloombeck’s flat. “I believe Mr Bloombeck had some excellent couches.”

The couches, the tables, the chairs, everything lay scattered about the flat. “Contents may have shifted during flight,” said Madolyn, pushing aside a pile of crystal mice that had, somehow, survived the trip. Bloombeck’s body was gone; the only sign of him was a melon-sized spatter of blood on the wall. Everything smelled like vanilla.

“You didn’t think the lab might have gotten knocked around?” I said. “A few hundred glass vials full of Christ-knows-what didn’t concern you?”

“It did,” said Gricelda, “which is why we used the appropriate packing material.” She pointed at the ceiling hatch; it was filled with hardened riot foam. “I do wish they’d do something about the scent, though.”

Banks and I set Nariel and Mimi on the ground while the twins set two chairs upright. He avoided my gaze as he turned a table upright and sat on it.

“Oh, Mr Banks, don’t be such a Sulky Suzie,” said Madolyn. “We taught you better than that. Or are you still upset you’ve gotten messy and didn’t cover your tracks any better?”

“It took us quite a while to get you the first time,” said Gricelda.

I looked at Banks. “You tried to Breach before?”

“Six years ago,” said Madolyn. “He jumped ship on the way to a job.” She
tsked
. “There were only three destinations from that situation, and you took the most obvious one.” She swept a hand out the window.

“However, it has led us to
you
,” said Gricelda, reaching back to smile at me. “Which brings us to our offer.”

“We want you to work for us.”

“In an executive capacity.”

“Of course.”

“Of
course
.”

“As what?” I said.

“As one of
us
,” said Gricelda. “As a Covert Business Interference Asset.”

“There’ll be all sorts of benefits, of course,” said Madolyn. “We’ll solve your little brain problem for starters. That’ll feel nice, won’t it?”

“And, just to sweeten the deal, we’ll put you in charge of your former associate again!” Gricelda pointed to Nariel, like she was a freshly landed prize sturgeon.

“It’s time we had some fresh talent,” said Madolyn.

“New perspective.”

“New blood.”

“Ours is beginning to get a bit stale.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Madolyn.

“I’ve seen your medical report, dear, and it ain’t pretty,” said Gricelda.

“The point, Miss Mehta, is that you could be an incredible asset to our team.”

“Santee Anchorage is just the jumping-off point of our new operation,” said Madolyn, showing me her teeth. “We’re going to move slowly at first, a planet here, a station there, but we’ll be making big moves soon.”

“
Giant
moves,” said Gricelda. “The kind that end up with people rewriting history books that are then published on your own presses.”

“So
many
opportunities, not just in making rum. There’s agriculture.”

“Manufacture.”

“Finance.”

“Media.”

“Guns,” said Madolyn, raising an eyebrow.

“Bloody
great
guns,” said Gricelda, clapping her hands.

“So, how about it?” said Madolyn with a smile and shrug, even though her eyes were all business. “Are you in?”

“Imagine what we’ll do!” said Gricelda.

“Imagine what
you’ll
do,” said Madolyn.

“Conquest!”

“Adventure!”

“Revenge…” Gricelda dropped that last word and let it sit there, like a cat who’d just killed a pigeon and dumped it on the lunch table.

Madolyn nodded. “You’re not the only one who just wanted a better life and got turned into a guinea pig.”

“We’re all head cases,” said Gricelda, waving a hand to encircle all of us. “We’ve seen bits and pieces of far worse experimentation, things that have pushed the boundaries of exploitation way, way into bad territory.”

“Audience hybridization.”

“Genetic focus grouping.”

“Behavioral supplementation.”

“Soul mining.”

“Atmospheric licensing.”

“Subscription warfare.”

“Imagine entire populations, entire planets, all either working for or buying from the Big Three, their lives manipulated all in the name of time and motion,” said Madolyn. “You think it’s bad having your dreams stolen? What if you’d never had them in the first place because your parents hadn’t able to pay for a cortical upgrade?”

“There’s more out there than the struggles of this tiny planet, Miss Mehta,” said Gricelda, “and we know you’re the woman to lead the fight.”

“Think about having an army of people at your beck and call,” said Madolyn. “Brigades of accountants and lawyers and engineers, all ready to carry out your policies, all in the name of liberating the human spirit and expanding our consciousness beyond these mere four dimensions.”

“Worlds within worlds within time within spaces,” said Gricelda. “It’s all rather mindblowing, actually.”

“You’re talking about working for WalWa again,” I said.

“Oh, no!” said Gricelda.

“Lord, no!” said Madolyn. They both laughed, long and hard, rolling back in their seats and holding their sides. It was like being stuck in a steel box with a pack of stoned hyenas.