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The phone rang as Celia was towelling her hair dry, with almost calculated inconvenience. She growled and activated the loudspeaker with her CICI.
"Yes!" she said tersely, still rubbing vigorously at her hair.
"Celia, it has been too long." The voice was bone-dry, dispassionate, distantly familiar.
"Who is this?" Her voice betrayed a note of irritation.
"Come on, you should remember. Cast your mind back. South Georgia?"
She stopped drying her hair. Goosebumps crawled with alacrity across her still-moist skin. "Professor?"
"Well done." Then there was an impression of fluttering. She shrieked at a feathery sensation on her neck and then a sharp, narrow puncture. A hard pea-sized lump manifested some way beneath her skin. She put her hand to her flesh to feel something papery there. She pulled at it. She felt her skin lift at point of the prick. Whatever it was had been embedded several centimetres deep. She looked in her hand. A black crushed moth lay there, still. A long, thread-like proboscis hung limply between her fingers.
Her CICI informed her that it had just received a network request for full access. She was just about to refuse when the parchment voice on the telephone spoke again.
"Listen, Celia." It spoke in a deadly, commanding hiss. "Your life is now measured in minutes. That is Crucible's best. You will be very very co-operative or you will be very very dead. You will accept the request for access to your CICI in five seconds or you will die."
It took one second. Dr Celia Janus watched the phone, trembling and hunted. It remained pregnantly silent for a few seconds.
"Good. Now you have about ten minutes before your internal organs start to haemorrhage so you need to move fast. There is a car, a white Mercedes, waiting around the corner from your apartment block in St George's Drive. Get in on the passenger's side at the front. Go!"
"This phone is likely to be tapped, you know?" Celia managed.
"All the more reason to move fast. If Bold's security stop you then no one can help you." The phone clicked off.
"Shit!" She said. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"
Then she tied the belt of her silk bathrobe tight and ran for the stairs. Half-stumbling, holding her robe tightly and with as much dignity as she could muster with it flapping about her, she made it down three storeys without spraining anything and out into the lobby. She was starting to sweat profusely and the periphery of her vision had become a grey blur.
She saw the security guard. "Evenin', Doc." He looked bewildered as she charged past him and out of the large glass doors. She stumbled bare-foot down the marble stairs at the front of the Pimlico apartment block and tripped at the bottom. Her legs felt shaky and unable to support her weight.
It took a great effort of will to stand and start running again. Her vision had narrowed to a tight circular tunnel, her throat throbbed hot and her heart pounded. She heard, only vaguely, the security men burst from the building behind her and start after her. She forced herself to run or stumble faster, the turning fixed in the grey circle of her sight before her.
She stumbled again, trying to turn the corner, and fell as a 'Morph caught his arm around her waist. She saw the Mercedes in front of her. Both front doors were open. On the driver's side a silhouette stood with a rifle raised. There were two cracks as the gun discharged and the grip on her waist went slack.
She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled forward, using her hands as well, in a loping, ape-like gait. The rifle cackled with a fully automatic burst at something behind her and she felt her legs go away underneath her again.
The mysterious gunman was an indistinct blur now. He was racing forward, laying down suppressive fire at the corner of the building around which her pursuers were emerging. Strong, almost gentle, arms dragged her to her feet and the gunman shouted,
"If you want to live get to the car."
She staggered against the door and tumbled in, utterly exhausted. Her abdomen tightened and she was aware of a salty, metallic taste in her mouth and distant gunfire. A door slammed and then another. Everything was hazy now, her hearing and her sight. She wanted to sleep. She vomited blood again and then fainted.
* * *
"Uncle T, I've got her." Titus swerved around the corner, wincing slightly as the car bumped over the body of a Bold Industries security man.
"Excellent. Is she all right?"
"She was vomiting blood. She is bleeding from her nose and ears and her complexion has undoubtedly been better." He sniffed.
"We need to get her on a respirator inside the next fifteen minutes or she'll drown in her own blood. After that we have got the best part of six hours before the damage is irreparable. The VTOL is in position for pick up. The paramedics are standing by."
"Understood. She has made a real mess of the car."
"You will be able to live with it. It is just blood and bile, isn't it? She hasn't lost bowel control yet, hmmm?"
"No. Hold on. There are a couple of motorcycles in pursuit." Titus rammed his foot down on the accelerator and wound down his window. The car was filled with rushing air.
Then, turning a corner, he braked hard. There was a loud crash as one of bikes hit the side of the Merc, catapulting the rider over the roof. The other bike wheeled out to the right and past the car, pulling around as the rider levelled a gun towards the driver's window. Titus already had his pistol in hand and his bead drawn as the motorcyclist was still bringing his SMG to bear. The visor of the 'Morph's helmet shattered and he sat statue-like for a moment before he and his bike toppled over to the side with a crash.
The other pursuer was picking himself up, drunkenly, stunned by the impact, and was pulling a gun. Titus released the brake and sped off again, bullets ricocheting off the armoured plating on the back of the car.
"It is done. I'm on my way to the pick up, Uncle... Shit! That wasn't bad for a five minute response."
"That's Bold Industries for you. Almost like they're expecting trouble."
* * *
Dr Celia Janus awoke to a familiar white ceiling, painfully lit with actinic light. South Georgia. It had been an old whaling station when there had still been whaling. Without whalers, its raison d'être had disappeared, and with that the few people who had called it home. It had been fairly easy to persuade the GSSA to turn it over to Crucible. The place was a remote island in the Southern Ocean, naturally quarantined, naturally discreet.
She had lived and worked here once as one of Crucible's rising stars before she had got lost, quietly, during shore leave. She had reneged on a deal with the Devil, got greedy.
And now she was back.
"Good afternoon, Celia." A shadow encroached upon the vista of the ceiling and its grim menace encroached on her consciousness. It was then she noticed how weak she felt, how every part of her body ached. She turned her head slowly, painfully. He hadn't changed a bit.
"Professor... "
"Don't talk too much. You've not been well. Everything is all right now though. You are going to be fine in a few weeks. You have the best, the very best, medics in the world working on you."
"You poisoned me."
"Shhh! It was unfortunate. But you did have to go and play truant. Very unfortunate. For you."
"What now, Professor?" Her eyes searched the impassive face, the wry smile, the eyes feigning sympathy. The only thing behind those eyes was a reptilian cruelty. It seemed as if her heart had been pierced by a splinter of ice.
He pursed his lips. "Remember when I first took an interest in your career. Remember when I took you under my wing. I showed you a little project of mine; a computer that I was working on. I told you then that if you betrayed my kindness then you would join those wretched souls. I told you what it would be like, having your most precious memories laid bare to those degenerate minds who long for some kindling of humanity in their eternal ennui. I told you this, Celia. And you betrayed me anyway. For what? For money. You could have been my right-hand. You could have been great, Celia. You squandered that potential when you sold out. Was it worth it, Celia?" His voice sank into a venomous hiss. His eyes were truly cold now, narrowing with menace.
"No. No it wasn't," she managed wretchedly, terrified but too weak to move. "Please! Please, Professor!"
"Oh, but dear Celia, it is far too late for that now." He mused for a moment. "Unless..." He left it hanging.
"Unless what? Anything?" She did not have the strength to panic fully. Instead she was overwhelmed by a helpless, nauseous dread.
"No, Celia, you rest up now." He smiled benevolently. "You get a bit stronger and, when you are, we will have a nice little meal together, a bottle of wine, just like old times." His voice sounded wistful but she knew there was no sentiment in it. She shuddered. "We'll have a talk then and you'll tell me all about what you've been up to these past couple of years and you won't tell a single lie, you deceitful little bitch, and then we'll work out what we are going to do with you."
The figure at the bedside drew himself up to his full impressive height, like a rearing cobra, and gazed down on her balefully. Then he turned and swept from the room.
Geoff Hinkley, 13/06/01
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