"Okay." I cross my arms. "When I left this morning, I thought I'd check out a hunch. I found out the hard way that Billington's got a total surveillance lockdown on the French Cul de Sac north of Paradise Peak. Dead birds on Anse Marcel, seagulls everywhere. His people are running zombies.
Human ones, too." Boris looks like he's about to interrupt, but I keep on talking: "I had a run-in with one of them. Ramona helped me get out of it, and we lost them by going swimming close to the island defense chain. Which has been tampered with, incidentally, compromising the three-mile offshore thaumaturgic-exclusion zone — did you know that? Ramona says her sources say Billington's going to be back at the casino tonight, so we made a date. How does that fit with your plans"
When I finish Boris nods. "Is making progress. Please to be continuing it." He turns to Pinky: "Get Brains." To me: "Am authorizing contact tonight. These two are being explain gizmos for self-defense. Call me later." And he leaves, just as there's a loud toilet-flushing sound and Brains comes out of the bathroom.
"Okay," I say, pointing at the half-inflated, bright yellow life belt hanging round his waist. "What's that about? And do I want to know"
"Just testing." Brains pushes it down around his feet then steps out of it. "Can I have your dress shoes, please"
"My shoes?" I bend down and rummage for them in my luggage. They're horrible things, shiny patent leather with soles that feel like lumps of wood. "What do you want them for"
Pinky is doing something to the PlayStation. "This." He flourishes another smartcard, which Brains takes and slides into a hitherto invisible seam in the leather tongue of my right shoe.
"And this," Brains says, holding up a shoelace. "That's a — "
"Miniature 100BaseT cable. Pay attention, Bob, you don't want to lose your network connectivity, do you? It goes in like this and to activate it you twist and pull like that; it uncoils to three meters and the plastic caps expand to fit any standard network socket. It doubles as a field-expedient grounding strap, too. That's right. No, you don't want to tie your shoelaces too tight."
I try to stifle a groan. "Guys, is this really necessary? Does it help me do the job"
Pinky cocks his head to one side. "Predictive Branch says there's a ten percent chance of you failing on the job and dying horribly if you don't take it." He giggles. "Feeling lucky, punk?"
"Bah. What do I really need to know"
"Here." Brains tosses a stainless steel Zippo lighter to me: "It's an antique, don't lose it. Predictive Branch said it would come in handy."
"I don't smoke. What else"
"The usual stuff: There's a USB memory drive preloaded with a forensic intrusion kit hidden in each end of your dickey-bow, a WiFi-finder on your key ring, a roll-up keyboard in your cummerbund, the pen's got Bluetooth and doubles as a mouse, and there's a miniaturized Tillinghast resonator in your left heel. You turn it on by twisting the heel through one-eighty degrees; turn it off the same way.
Your other heel is just a heeclass="underline" We were going to hide a Basilisk gun in it but some ass-hat in Export Controls vetoed our requisition because it was going overseas. Oh, and there's this." Brains reaches over to a briefcase on the bed and pulls out a businesslike nylon shoulder holster and a black automatic pistol. "Walther P99, 9mm caliber, fifteen-round magazine, silvercap hollow-points engraved with a demicyclic banishment circuit in ninety-nanometer Enochian."
"Banishment rounds?" I ask hesitantly, then: "Hang on."
I hold up one hand: "I'm not cleared for carrying guns in the field!"
"We figured the exorcism payload means it's covered by your occult weapons certification. If anyone asks, it's just a gadget for installing exorcism glyphs at high speed." Brains sits down on the bed, ejects the magazine, works the action to make sure there's no round in the chamber, then starts stripping it down. "Word from Angleton is the bad guys are likely to get heavy and he wants you carrying."
"Oh my." I blank for a moment. It's only about an hour since I sliced some poor bastard's air hose in half, and having to deal with this so soon afterwards is doing my head in.
"Did he really say that"
"Yes. We don't want to end up losing you by accident because someone starts shooting and you're unarmed, do we"
"I guess not." He passes the shoulder holster to me and I try to figure out how it goes on. "Well, if you're all done now, maybe you could leave so I can phone home"
After Pinky and Brains leave, I call down to room service for a light lunch, put the door chain on, then go run a bath.
There's a wet suit hanging over the shower rail and an oxygen tank leaning up against the toilet. While the bath's filling I try phoning home, but get the answering machine. I try Mo's mobile, but that's switched off, too. She must still be in Dunwich under lockdown. Feeling sorry for myself, I go and rinse the salt off my skin: but I can't hang around in the bath without thinking of Ramona, and that's not a healthy sign either. I'm confused about her, I feel guilty whenever I think about Mo, and the smell of saltwater brings back that frightening slow-motion underwater tumble, knife in hand. This isn't me: I'm just not the cold-blooded killer type. When shit needs kicking and throats need slitting we send in Alan's goon squad. I'm supposed to be the quiet geek who sits at the back of the computer lab, right?
Except I signed my name on the line a few years ago, right ..below the paragraph that said I accepted the Crown's commission to go forth and perpetrate mayhem in the defense of the realm, as lawfully directed and commanded by my designated superiors. And while most of the time it's trivial shit — like breaking into an office and leaving evidence to shitcan some poor bastard who's stumbled too close to the truth — there's nothing there that says I'm not required to wrestle killers in wet suits or molest alien monsters. Quite the contrary, in fact. I don't have a license to kill, but I don't have orders not to kill in the course of my duties, either. Which realization I find extremely disturbing; its like the sensation in your stomach the first time you get into a car after getting your driving license, when you suddenly realize there's no instructor in the seat next to you and this is not a test. I wrap myself in a bath sheet and go back out into the bedroom. It's about one in the afternoon and I've got a few hours to kill before Ramona is due back. Lunch shows up and is as blandly tasteless as usual — I swear that there's a force field in the hotel dimensions that sucks the flavor out of food. I badly want something that'll distract me from pursuing this morbid introspection. Pinky left the PlayStation behind, so I plop myself down in front of the TV, pick up the controller, and poke at it in a desultory sort of way. Candy-bright graphics and a splash screen flicker by as the machine clunks and whirs, loading; then it launches a road race game, in which I'm driving a variety of cars along winding roads around a jungle-covered island while zombies shoot at me. "Arse," I mutter, and switch off in disgust.
I check that my tablet PC is plugged into all the wards correctly, then draw the curtains and He down on the bed for a short nap.
I'm awakened what feels like a split second later by a banging on the door. "Hey, monkey-boy! Rise and shine!"
Jesus. I've been asleep for hours. "Ramona?" I stand up and stagger towards the vestibule. My upper thighs and forearms ache as if I've been beaten — must be the swimming. I draw the chain and open the door.
"Had a good nap?" She raises an eyebrow at me.
"Got to get — " I pause. "Dressed." Damn, I haven't phoned Mo, I realize. Ramona is looking like about a million dollars, in a blue evening dress that clings to her improbably well — it seems to be held on with double-sided sticky tape. There's several meters of pearl rope wound into her hair: she must have found a handy time warp for the make-up crew to have had time to get her ready for the fashion photo-shoot.