‘Hey!’ I said. He looked round at me. ‘That’s a reasonable response. You don’t want her hurt, keep her under control.’
I got the feeling Tailgunner was a reasonable guy but that Strange was a weak spot for him. I also think he wasn’t used to people speaking to him the way I had. I could take him, I told myself. I almost believed it as well. Unless he had more motivation than I did. Still angry, he opened his mouth to say something else, issue another threat.
‘Enough,’ Mother said quietly and sat down.
Big Henry and Dog Face were looking at her. I think they’d expected another resolution to the situation.
‘You know what would be nice?’ Mudge said.
‘A conversation without knives, guns and potential violence?’ Pagan suggested.
Mudge nodded. I looked at him incredulously.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Oh yeah, I’m on a nice mellow high. Thought it would help getting to know people.’
‘That’s very responsible of you,’ Morag said.
‘Can you take it all the time?’ Cat asked from behind us.
‘Yeah, ’cause it’s fucking brilliant in a fight,’ Mudge said sarcastically.
Mother was just watching us with a raised eyebrow. Tailgunner and the others had sat back down. Mudge passed Dog Face the now half-empty bottle of vodka.
‘She has… problems,’ Mother said.
It was almost an apology coming from her. I nodded. It was obvious that bad things had happened to her.
‘Don’t fucking apologise to them,’ Tailgunner said angrily.
Mother and Tailgunner were clearly partners and long term. They were the mum and dad of this dysfunctional family but it was obvious that this caused tension between them. It wasn’t jealousy on Mother’s part but something else. I wondered if she was afraid of Strange for some reason.
‘Like I said, they’re useless to us. Nothing but trouble,’ Merle said.
He sprayed antiseptic on the cut before applying a knitter and a foam bandage to it.
‘Why were the comms on your mechs disabled?’ Pagan asked again, and again they all went quiet.
‘Tell them,’ Mother said.
‘What, all of a sudden we’re best friends?’ Tailgunner demanded.
‘They trusted us; we may as well trust them. Because you know what happens if we don’t?’ Mother paused. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘The risk-’ Tailgunner started.
‘Is the same as any other day. We’ll either live or we die.’
I was starting to warm to Mother. She was my kind of NCO, but Merle was right: she cared too much. But then again the same could be said about me. Well, when it came to Morag anyway, I cared far too much. Mudge also, sometimes, and Pagan to a degree, and I was putting off thinking about Rannu. It was a near certainty he was dead.
I was grateful it was my turn with the bottle of vodka. I took a deep long pull from it. The burn in my throat from the alcohol was a welcome change to the constant burn from the atmosphere. It still tasted like rotten eggs.
Tailgunner swallowed hard. He didn’t look happy but he told us anyway. ‘Miru, the ruler of night, warned us to separate ourselves from the spirit world.’
My heart sank.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Merle spat and turned to look at me. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to appeal to my common sense or was getting ready to walk away. Then again I didn’t fully understand why he was here. ‘We’re just wasting our time.’
‘Merle,’ Cat said from behind me, ‘back off for a bit.’
‘This is hacker religious bullshit,’ he said angrily.
‘Why don’t you show some fucking respect?’ Dog Face demanded.
I noticed that Strange was swaying in and out of the light and shadows further inside the cavern, still watching us. Glaring at Merle.
‘Why don’t you show me something to respect?’ Merle demanded.
‘I think you’re spending too much time with Mudge,’ I said to him.
‘Hey!’ Mudge said. ‘I’m behaving.’ And he was. He was also studying the patterns in the rocks intently.
‘He was like this before he met Mudge,’ Cat assured us.
Merle glared at her angrily. ‘Look, I understand that the lack of sensory information to certain parts of your brain in the net means it gets filled with religious horseshit. I understand that trancing-in presses the button on the religious gene, but this has nothing to do with why we’re here.’
‘Work on your own a lot?’ Morag asked him sarcastically.
‘Yeah, you can see why.’
‘Because you struggle to form relationships with normal people?’ Morag guessed.
Merle looked exasperated. ‘Fine, whatever, but this religious stuff still has nothing to do with what we’re trying to accomplish.’
‘Which is?’ Tailgunner asked. I saw Mother touch his leg and shake her head.
‘It’s real for them.’ I was surprised to hear this come out of my mouth. So were Pagan and Morag judging by the looks they gave me.
I think I was just sick and tired of religious discussions. I seemed to have had a lot of them in the last few months. I’d been instrumental in God’s release into the net and I’d met one of the so-called gods in there. I still had no problem being an atheist. Now I was not happy with another god rearing its head, even if only peripherally to us. I was hoping it was only operational paranoia, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were moving around us, helping shape events, manipulating us while staying out of sight.
‘Besides,’ said Pagan, ‘the warning seems to have had very real effects.’
Merle shook his head as if he couldn’t be bothered to argue. I hoped he was going to be quiet for a while. Suddenly Mudge started laughing. We all looked at him.
‘Normal people,’ he repeated as if he’d just got the punchline of a joke.
‘You SF types are awesome,’ Big Henry said, smiling.
‘He’s a journalist,’ Pagan, Cat and I replied at the same time.
‘A journalist and a sadly retired hooker… Wow. You really are here to rescue us.’
‘Tell them the rest,’ Mother said, apparently unimpressed with the banter.
‘We’ve got a little piece of it,’ Tailgunner said.
‘A piece of what?’ Pagan asked carefully.
‘The Black Wave,’ the big hacker answered.
Pagan and Morag gaped at him. I must have been doing the same thing. Even Merle looked up. Mudge was leaning closer to the smooth rock floor. We’d bored him earlier in the conversation, it seemed.
‘How?’ I asked.
‘Miru, the ruler of the night, gave me an eel net to cast at-’ Tailgunner started.
‘Okay, never mind. Forget I asked,’ I said.
Tailgunner looked a little pissed off.
‘Can you not be fucking serious?’ Merle asked.
Tailgunner turned to look at him. There was something about the situation that reminded me of the time the two hardest guys in Fintry had confronted each other when I was a kid.
‘He is,’ Morag said, obviously fascinated.
‘And this is important,’ Pagan said. ‘You mean to say that one of the gods of Maori mythology-’
‘Don’t call it a mythology, pakeha,’ Tailgunner warned him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pagan apologised, though I don’t think he knew what pakeha meant. ‘But one of your gods gave you a program of some kind?’
Tailgunner nodded. ‘A program that I can’t understand. Just like the eel it caught.’
‘Huh?’ I managed intelligently.
‘The piece of the Black Wave I caught, it looked like an eel in the net,’ Tailgunner explained.
‘Did you see the Wave?’ Pagan asked.
‘Yes, and yes, it looked like a big black wave. It ignored every piece of security, every defence in the site as if it wasn’t there. It co-opted some of my security programs, changing them as I watched, and took control of every net-linked system.’