Something Coming Through

25. Max Predator

Norfolk | 9 July

Sandra said that two small boats were approaching from different directions, impossible to tell whether they were police or Jack Baines’s friends. Maybe both.

‘We’ll keep them distracted while you and the asset make your escape,’ she told Henry Harris.

‘The asset?’ Chloe said, as she followed Henry through the misty junkyard.

‘It’s like being a VIP.’

‘In your world, maybe.’

‘This is my world. Stay close, do what I tell you, and we’ll be fine.’

They had almost reached the ladder to the landing stage when two men stepped out from behind a dinghy upturned on railway sleepers. One young and muscular, a baseball bat cocked on his shoulder; the other about Henry’s age, long grey hair tied back with a red bandana, raising a shotgun and saying, ‘Stay right where you fucking are.’

Chloe raised her hands out of stupid instinct.

‘And who might you be?’ Henry said.

‘I own this place,’ the man said. He had a wall-eyed glare that radiated pure black menace. ‘Who the fuck might you be?’

‘Pirates, matey,’ Henry said. ‘If I were you, I’d put down that gun.’

‘I don’t reckon I will,’ the man said, and there was a sudden sharp bang and he spun halfway around.

Chloe flinched, thinking that the man had shot Henry, and Leo stepped up beside them and fired his riot gun again and the man slammed against the handrail by the ladder and dropped his shotgun. Henry stepped forward and in a single smooth move scooped up the shotgun and gave the man a hard shove that flipped him over the rail. Henry looked down, then slung the shotgun far out into the misty air and turned and said, ‘Thanks, Leo.’

‘What about this one?’ Leo said. He was aiming his riot gun at the young man, who had dropped his baseball bat and spread his hands.

‘Let me guess,’ Henry said to the young man. ‘You work for the people Jack Baines was supposed to deliver us to.’

‘If you think you can get away with this you’re fucked,’ the man said. He had the sullen look of a schoolboy caught trespassing.

‘If I were you,’ Henry told him, ‘I’d think long and hard about the life choices that brought you here. Can you handle this, Leo?’

‘Not a problem. What about the people in the other boat?’

‘We’ll give them a run for their money,’ Henry said, and grabbed Chloe’s arm and pulled her towards the ladder. As she climbed down she saw the grey-haired man struggling to extract himself from hip-deep mud. He was beslimed from head to foot, the whites of his eyes flashing when Henry gave him a cheerful little wave.

‘Buckle up,’ Henry told Chloe. ‘We’re in for a bumpy ride.’

Chloe was still strapping herself into the bench seat when the airboat shot away from the landing stage and skimmed past a speedboat that suddenly appeared out of the mist. A quick glimpse of two men in the boat, one of them yelling something, a throaty roar as the speedboat’s motors revved up. Henry shouted ‘Hold on!’ and the airboat swerved hard. A ridge of marram grass rushed towards them. Chloe locked her arms around the back of the bench and with a jouncing rush the airboat was suddenly airborne, launched from the top of the ridge and skimming across the back slope in a long arc. Her messenger bag flipped up and walloped her in the face, and the airboat landed on water with a jolting impact, swerving at a sharp tilt between two wings of spray. For a moment, she thought that it would tip over, but then its hull slapped down and it was off again, smashing through a reed bed.

‘Pure James Bond,’ Henry yelled happily.

Chloe had bitten her tongue. She spat blood, told him that he was a crazy fool.

‘That’s what they said to the Wright brothers.’

‘I think you can slow down now.’

After a minute he did. The rattle of reed stalks died back to a soft hiss. He said, ‘We should be all right. The mist’s too thick for them to put up a drone. If those losers even have a drone.’

‘Are we going back to Martham?’

The airboat reached a long channel and Henry steered into it. ‘We’ll head for civilisation and call for a pickup.’

‘Just how many people are involved in this?’

‘As many as necessary. The Prof is taking it very seriously. She wants to make sure we do our best by you and those runaway kids.’

It didn’t comfort Chloe. Ada Morange had a reputation for getting what she wanted. Chloe, caught up in the gears of her machine, had a bad feeling that she had made the wrong decision, that she was running into trouble instead of away from it. She felt that she had been shanghaied. Kidnapped. The steady progress of the airboat deeper into mist and uncharted marshes didn’t help.

She and Henry talked about what they knew. Sahar Chauhan had gone up to Mangala, sent artefacts back, had been killed because of obscure drug-gang politics. Fahad had found out about his father’s death and had run off with his little sister, both of them infected by something. An eidolon that had also got inside Gert Baines’s head, Chloe told Henry.

‘One of her tapestries was the spit of the drawing that Leo found,’ she said. ‘And Rana Chauhan showed me a similar drawing when I met her and her brother in the DP camp. She mentioned something she called Ugly Chicken, too. I think that’s what she thought the eidolon looked like. It got inside her head, her brother’s, Gert’s, and it did something to Mr Archer and his followers, too.’

‘That’s how it started for you, didn’t it?’ Henry said. ‘Their breakout.’

‘I think Fahad took off again because he was scared the breakout would attract the wrong kind of attention,’ Chloe said. ‘And in a way he was right.’

‘It gives me a funny feeling inside my skull, thinking about these alien ghosts. Like an itch I can’t scratch. How come,’ Henry said, ‘it affects people differently? The kid did these pictures, but the people in that cult were all happy-clappy and babbling in tongues.’

‘Eidolons try to communicate with us, but we can’t understand or comprehend what they’re trying to say. So when we try to channel it, translate it, it comes out in different ways. Often manifesting in obsessive-compulsive activity.’

‘Meaning this kid can’t stop making those pictures.’

‘He thinks he’s saying something important. Something urgent. Something people need to know,’ Chloe said.

She was channelling Daniel Rosenblaum, and wondered where Daniel was now. She hoped that he and Jen and the rest of the crew were safe, sent up a little prayer.

‘So we just have to look for more paintings or whatever.’

‘And graffiti, pavement art, that kind of thing.’ Chloe was thinking of the poster. She’d wanted very badly to ask Jack and Gert Baines about it, but there hadn’t been time. She said, ‘Also, there’s the guy who turned up at the breakout. Who has a client who is interested in Fahad’s stuff.’

‘Eddie Ackroyd. Yes, I would definitely like to have a little chat with him. If the Hazard Police haven’t found him first. And if they haven’t,’ Henry said, ‘the first thing I’ll ask him is why not.’

The mist lifted long before they reached Norwich. They left the airboat in the harbour and found a coffee shop on the bustling waterfront. Dehydrated and slightly dizzy from too much sun, Chloe drank a bottle of water straight down, and while Henry phoned his contact she excused herself and in the bathroom stall called Gail Ann Jones. She used the phone that she hadn’t told Henry about, the phone she hadn’t been using because reporters had glommed on to it. And possibly the police too, if Henry was right, but needs must.

‘I thought you were going to call the phone you gave me,’ Gail Ann said.

‘I don’t want to compromise it — I’ve had to use my old phone. I shouldn’t even be calling you…’

‘But you need backup. Are you okay? What can I do?’

Chloe gave her friend a quick recap of her adventure at the sea fort. Realising as she talked how totally Gothic it sounded. Dead nuns, drug dealers, a madly obsessed artist held prisoner with his little sister…And she hadn’t even mentioned the appearance of the Jackaroo avatar.

Gail Ann said that it sounded like she’d been having a high old time. Chloe said that it really wasn’t all that. She’d seen herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink: dishevelled and sunburned, her camo jacket spattered with dried mud.

She said, ‘But I did learn some useful stuff about Fahad’s family. And I found something that might help me find him. It looks like he’s a fan of cage fighters. He had a poster of one. A guy named Max Predator.’

Gail Ann said, ‘For real?’

‘I guess it’s like a stage name. I was wondering if you could find out who he is, where he works.’

‘Ask him if he knows the kid you’re looking for? That’s a long shot, sweetie.’

‘The poster was signed. And this guy has all kinds of body mods. Plates of armour on his shoulders, his upper arms, devil horns in his forehead. A lot of that stuff is Elder Culture tech. And a lot of people in that world do drugs, too. Stuff that enhances their neural responses.’

Daniel Rosenblaum had once written an article about the cage-fighting scene; Chloe had skim-read it when she’d started out with Disruption Theory.

Gail Ann said, ‘So this cage fighter might have bought his drugs from the bad guys who were keeping your kids prisoner.’

‘I think there could be a strong link. It’s a genuine subculture, cage fighting,’ Chloe said, wishing she’d paid more attention to Daniel’s article. ‘A sort of cross between transhumanism and showbiz.’

‘Are there girl fighters?’

‘Why not?’ Chloe said, even though she wasn’t sure.

‘Because I’m trying to think out a line of attack.’

‘You don’t have to write the article, just introduce yourself, say you’re thinking of doing a piece. Say you happen to know Fahad Chauhan, or drop his name somehow.’

‘Ask if they have a current address for him? Why would they?’

‘I’m wondering what else Fahad’s father sent back from Mangala. Whether Fahad ever sold this Max Predator anything, did he hang around the place, is he part of a fan base, and so on.’

Chloe’s hand was sweating on the phone. She was worried that Henry Harris would burst in and find her. Worried that the police or some reporter would get a fix on her. But she couldn’t pass up this chance to get ahead of Ada Morange’s machine, to give herself an edge, something she could use to negotiate a better deal. The quip about being an asset had stung hard.

Gail Ann said, ‘I’m looking at Maxie’s website right now. Ew.’

‘I’m not asking you to date him.’

‘According to this,’ Gail Ann said, ‘he’s part of a stable based at a gym in the Reef. Like he’s a racehorse.’

‘I know it isn’t much of a lead,’ Chloe said, ‘but it’s all I have right now. And listen, can you do this as soon as possible?’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘I’m not sure. A little, maybe. I’m definitely kind of on the run. And there are other people looking for Fahad. Bad guys.’

‘I’ll get my Girl Reporter act over there now,’ Gail Ann said.

‘Be careful. If there are any suspicious characters hanging around, anyone who looks like the police, forget about it. Bail.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’m having fun. And when this is over,’ Gail Ann said, ‘I’m going to sell the hell out this story. Try and stop me.’