The Medida War Page 14

  "Okay. Okay," Blackblood continued. "You want to get the broad back?"

  "Of course!" Joe was so desperate, he was even prepared to listen to Blackblood. He'd never felt like this before. It was worse than the most savage battles he'd fought during the Volgan War.

  "Okay, here's what you do. Send her flowers. Or jewellery. Bright, sparkly things. They like that," he said knowledgeably.

  "Really?"

  "They're like fragging magpies. They can't resist it. Believe me."

  "Okay, okay. I'll do that."

  He muttered her last words to himself.

  "Don't cry for me. Juanita."

  "Look," said Blackblood cruelly, determined to squeeze every last possible ounce of pleasure out of Joe's misery, "The truth is she never knew you. Not like I do."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Remember those photos? She wasn't the only one who tasted Heaven. I wish I still had the negs. If she saw them, you'd be history anyway."

  "Shut up!"

  "Hey! I'm trying to make you feel better. You had a lucky escape. You'll be pleased later. You know what Hispanic chicks like her say? 'The man he make-a the money. The woman she spend-a the money.'"

  "You are really fragging me off, Blackblood!"

  "I'm doing it to help you release your anger. It's what friends are for, buddy."

  "Don't help."

  This scene from Robots Behaving Badly was finally brought to a conclusion when Hammerstein came in and ordered them out on patrol. The mob was trying to break into the Viking City Zoo and kill its trinary occupants.

  Creatures like the Martian redwolf and the trihimoth - which had been hand-raised by humans from Medusa's biosacs - had not been regarded as a threat up until now, but not any longer.

  After Colonisation Day, the citizens of Viking City hated all things Martian.

  Lora Bluecanyon pulled up in her Cartier coupe outside the Sweet Dreams Motel with its half-lit sign: "Vacancies."

  It looked like it was suffering from a terminal case of sick-building syndrome. It had been converted from an "o-asis," an oxygen assistance centre that dated back to the early Terraforming days of the humpies. There were still oxygen cylinders piled up round the back and rusting compressors on top of the rooms.

  Sweet Dreams was a local firm rather than part of a motel chain like Biol Bunkhouses or Mack's Shacks, which explained its location on a side road, thirty kilometres off the Trans-Martian Highway. Most people would rather "Hit the sack in a Mack's shack" than spend the night in a dump like this.

  It wasn't even connected up to the biol mains. There was just an underground biol bulk storage tank leading to a boiler in the basement of the reception with pipes branching off into each room.

  Lora stepped out of her vehicle and looked towards the horizon. Beyond the motel was the desert and a line of towering, natural, redstone cathedrals that looked straight out of a John Ford movie.

  "Yes, this is the place all right," she thought.

  It was the reason Lora had chosen to stay here and not "shack up in a Big Mack."

  She recognised the mesas in the distance. It was the place of her dreams. Only when she'd seen the cathedrals before in her sleep, they had been at a different angle.

  She'd check in, have a snack, take a shower, relax, and then get to the bottom of the mystery.

  She parked and went over to reception.

  A google-eyed robot receptionist creaked towards her on rusty joints and checked her DA.

  She didn't like the way it took its time running its scanner over her curves, trying to find her nanochip.

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Sorry, Miss, having a little trouble finding it. Whoops!"

  "Do you mind?!"

  "There's nothing to worry about, miss. I am non-sentient."

  "I hope so."

  "Cabin Three. I've given your DA the authorisation signal."

  "Thanks."

  "Have a nice evening," said Google.

  She went over to Cabin Three. The door creaked invitingly open and she stepped inside.

  Lora had done some daring things in her young life so she was not afraid. Ever since she was a teenager, she'd lived with danger. Her father was one of the wealthiest men in Viking City. His firm had built many of its pyramids.

  But she didn't want anything to do with the family business; she'd always been a wild child wanting to live every moment in the fast lane.

  As a teenager, she'd been a pyramaniac - one of many who rode motorbikes up the sides of pyramids.

  "See what you think of this, daddy!" she had laughed as she drove up the side of the New Eiger.

  After she came out of hospital, she joined the Undertakers, a gang who undertook juggernauts. They would drive underneath the mammoth vehicles and then leap up and swing from their underparts. Where she got her death wish from, no one knew.

  She sold body swaps for a while and tried some herself just for the experience. And also because she wanted a break from her menstrual cycle which could be quite heavy under the effect of two moons.

  But then a boy refused to swap back: he was really enjoying himself in Lora's body. Lora was stuck in his body until she told daddy. Daddy had a quiet word with him/her. And it all got sorted out. The boy certainly got sorted out.

  Daddy didn't really want him as his "son-in-Lora."

  She became a cable car hostess on the Viking-Marineris intercity line. Not because she needed the money but because she liked the uniform.

  "I'm a trolly dolly," she'd say in her squeaky, babyish voice. No one was sure whether she was really a dumb blonde or just pretending.

  At the age of twenty-two, she fell in love with a DA tattooist. He tattooed moving pictures on her back and bottom where only he could watch them. Exotic animals and scenes from somewhere called Earth. After a year, he wanted to start work on her front. She knew then her relationship with him was over. She didn't like her asp and he didn't like the way she showed it off in public.

  She was very beautiful and she'd done it all. She had the eyes of a thirty-five year-old. What she hadn't done, she'd seen.

  It was about this time she had the strange, recurring, insistent dreams about cathedrals on Mars. Natural Notre Dames beyond a run-down motel, far-out in the Martian desert.

  And heard a voice calling to her on the wind:

  Across the bridge, there's no more sorrow,

  Across the bridge, there's no more pain,

  The sun will shine across the river,

  And we'll never be unhappy again.

  In her cabin, Lora turned on the biol tap. There was a delay as an ancient generator started up somewhere in the bowels of the biol boiler room. Then, after a lot of thudding and banging, hissing and clanking, the pipes came sullenly to life. After a further pause, and a little coaxing and twisting, her straining food tap managed to squidge out a couple of steaming biol beef-flavour sausages which plopped down onto her waiting plate. They tasted surprisingly good.

  As she tucked into them, she thought again about her dreams. They had given her no peace. The same every night. The cathedrals on Mars. Until, in desperation, she'd decided to do something about them. She had recorded them on her DA and a cyberspace search had found a photo-fit.

  What it all meant, she had no idea, but she was determined to solve the mystery.

  Tomorrow.

  She drank a neuropeptide from the mini-bar and turned on the trivia to help her relax as she got ready for bed.

  "Chill," it murmured obligingly. "Take it easy. Relax. Everything's okay. Mmm. You're looking good."

  Its voice sounded a little like the robot receptionist's.

  If she was still with her tattoist boyfriend, she'd kneel down now and say a little prayer to Gaia. Then she'd make him kiss all her cuddly toys goodnight before he could have anything else. All ten of them. Properly. And get their names right.

  That had been another problem in their relationship. He seemed to have no patience. She ha
d been quite upset by the way he talked about and treated Mr Fluffy. Mr Fluffy didn't like it either.

  Mr Fluffy came everywhere with her. He was on the pillow now, waiting for her. She put a fresh pair of hot pants in the fridge so they'd be ready for the morning and then prepared to take a shower.

  "Take it easy. Relax. Everything's okay," repeated the trivia on full trank.

  She took off her clothes and wrapped a white towel around her.

  "There's nothing to worry about, Lora," said the trivia.

  "I wasn't," she said, thinking the trivia was being a little off-message.

  "Well, I just thought I'd say it anyway," said the trivia.

  "What?" she replied, puzzled.

  "I am just a non-sentient machine. I know nothing. Take it easy. Relax. Everything's okay." repeated the trivia.

  Then added, with what seemed like a sigh, "Great body."

  It was a little unusual for the trivia to have conversations with her, Lora thought. She'd maybe have to get that checked in the morning.

  "Night, night," said Mr Fluffy.

  "Not yet," she gently admonished him. Wearing just the towel, she padded across the room on her tippy-toes, an involuntary reaction from years of wearing high heels.

  She entered the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  Outside the Sweet Dreams motel, the "Vacancies" light went off.

  SIXTEEN

  Lora luxuriated in the warm spray, washing the red dust off her body. It had been a long, hard drive across the desert to get here, especially on the C roads which were only three lanes wide.

  She had been stuck behind a small truck occupying the two outer lanes, leaving only the middle lane between its wheels free for smaller traffic. It had taken a good hour to undertake.

  She ran the bar of soap over her tattoos - over the luxuriant scene from a jungle on a place called Earth. She'd heard the name before and had figured out Earth was a planet, but she didn't really know where it was.

  She thought it might be something to do with the Gaia she said prayers to at bedtime when she wanted to keep her boyfriend waiting.

  As she soaped herself, the jungle came to life under her touch. Parrots squawked through the open pores of her perfect skin. Monkeys chattered as they swung through the branches. A snake slithered down her backbone and disappeared into the rocks. Exotic red and black frogs squelched about in a rock pool, longing for a princess's lips. The rain from the shower merged with the rain from the tropical forest. She revelled in them both.

  A shadowy, decaying female entered the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain.

  Lora screamed at the dead woman looking in at her. One of her red eyeballs hung down her cheek the other stared sightlessly, yet all-seeing and all-knowing, at her.

  Her green skin was infested with white trimites, larger and hungrier than the maggots of Earth.

  Despite the smell of rotting flesh, there was still the vague scent of lavender about her. And mothballs.

  The harridan raised a huge knife and began to stab Lora again and again.

  The monkeys were screeching in the trees.

  Screech.

  Screech.

  Screech.

  The rain forest was pouring with blood.

  "Oh, Gaia!" Lora cried, praying like she had never prayed before. But whichever way her body turned, there was the knife.

  Screech.

  Screech.

  Screech.

  She slumped to the ground. The shiny leaves of her lush green forest dripped red. Her body was a tapestry of gore.

  "Ribbit. Ribbit," went the frogs.

  "Gaark! Gaark!" proclaimed a parrot.

  "Oh, biol," whispered Lora weakly. "Please. Someone help me."

  "Relax," the trivia reminded her. "Everything's going to be all right."

  "Night, night," said Mr Fluffy.

  The undead woman stepped back from the shower, satisfied with her work. She caught sight of her dire, whiskered features in the bathroom mirror, which surprisingly didn't crack from the shock.

  "Yes," she thought. "Hirsute suits me."

  What more appropriate personification for Medusa than a hag brought back from the dead? She looked even more ghastly than when she was a lava lamp. Or the Colonisation Day main course.

  Medusa slopped out of the cabin in her slippers. She fell down the steps, picked herself up and slopped on. She nodded a command to the robot receptionist who waited outside.

  She shuffled off into the night. But then she realised she had dropped one of her arms so she returned irritably to retrieve it.

  Google went into the bathroom and grasped hold of Lora by her ankles.

  "Help me, please," she whispered.

  Google dragged the dying girl out of the bathroom, through the bedroom and outside. Her head bumped unceremoniously down the steps.

  Now there was work to be done. The machine seemed indifferent to the full display of her charms. It hauled her across the courtyard and round the back to a grave it had dug for her earlier.

  For the last time Lora saw the place that had become so familiar to her in her sleep. The Sweet Dreams motel. The endless Martian desert. The red cathedrals watching from a dignified distance.

  But this time she saw them all at the same angle as her dreams.

  Looking up.

  Two days later, down in the biol boiler room, Medusa leaned back in her rocking chair and regarded Deadlock. He had been summoned to the motel.

  "I thought I was being very diplomatic at the Colonisation Day party, Deadlock. Are you suggesting I wasn't?"

  "Well, your Martian Majesty..."

  "Well, what?" Her ghastly face was briefly lit from time to time by a single light bulb that swang slowly to and fro in the darkness.

  "I'm afraid the floppies-"

  "Floppies? What are floppies?" she interrupted irritably.

  "It's a robot nickname for humans, your Ladyship."

  "You mean extra-martials. Why don't you say that? Why do you call them floppies?"

  "The expression refers to the humans' soft and flexible composition. It's seen as less insulting than 'skin jobs' or 'fleshy ones'. The name may also have its origins in a comparison of the performance of robot and human males."

  "No. Never mind. I'm not interested. Who cares? Just speak properly in future. I have enough trouble understanding the ways of these aliens without you using obscure phrases."

  "Very well, my Lady."

  "Now what exactly is the problem?"

  "As I was saying, these extra-martials, these humans, don't take kindly to being subjected to verbal abuse by a Thanksgiving trikey."

  "I was just giving them a gentle reminder that I mean business!"

  She spoke softly until the final, harshly emphasised word caused her nose to go flying across the room.

  Deadlock politely passed it back.

  She tried fixing it back onto her face but it kept falling off.

  "Hmm. I think I should get myself stuffed," she pondered.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You heard."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand, your Majesty."

  "Employ the services of a taxidermist."

  "Ah, yes, of course. Yes, I had noticed you were going a rather putrescent shade of green. And my olfactory sensors are currently on overload," he added discreetly.

  "I'm not surprised, the state I'm in. There are bits of me falling off all the time. You're a bit slow on the uptake, Deadlock. I thought you understood the ways of humans better than me."

  "Hiring a taxidermist sounds like an excellent idea, my Lady. And not before time."

  "That's what I thought. So I went looking for one."

  "You went looking for a taxidermist?"

  "Yes. I smelt pretty rank and then I saw this sign outside a crane station saying 'Rank'. And there was one waiting! In his car!"

  "Ah," sighed Deadlock. "I see where this is going."

  "So I thought - perfect! I knocked politely on the ta
xidermist's window, but there must have been something behind me that upset him because he suddenly started screaming uncontrollably. I tried to get in the car to comfort the poor man but he locked all the doors and yelled, 'Get away from me, you hell hag!'"

  "Well, that's not very nice, is it? And I really needed his help because my intestines had just poured out all over his bonnet. Then he started his car and drove over me! I don't think that's how taxidermists should behave, do you?"

  "Most unfortunate, your Majesty. Humans' ways are still taking a little time for you to get used to."

  "I don't see why I should get used to them. I've half a mind to get rid of them anyway."

  "I assume that's the reason you summoned me?"

  "Yes. I suppose you think I should be easier on them?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do." Deadlock believed in standing up to bullies, even if they were planet-sized and capable of kicking a desert in his face. "I think you should show a little more patience and understanding."

  "And when their soldiers murder my trimorphs in the ghetto? And mobs attack my Marzahs?"

  Her voice was now shrill and grating. "Bearers of my Holy Words? And caged and helpless Martian redwolves?"

  "Helpless is not a word I'd normally use to describe a Martian redwolf."

  "What about the lava louts who throw grenades down my volcanoes to 'teach the mad old bag a lesson?'"

  "Yes, we're trying to do something about that."

  There was an uneasy silence as Medusa considered Deadlock's mild reproof.

  "Actually, there was something else I was going to ask you about, your Highness."

  "Yes?"

  "That coupe outside-"

  "What about it?"

  "Does it belong to one of your guests?"

  "Of course."

  "Gone for a walk, have they?"

  "My staff are burying her with the others."

  "Oh, biol!"

  "Next to the cyber-whale harpoonist, the trihimoth tracker and the pyramaniac."

  "You murdered them?"

  "I fail to understand your cause for concern, Deadlock. I was doing them all a favour. That's why I invited them to the Sweet Dreams Motel"