Part 31 (1/2)

'It's a long shopping list,' admitted the Doctor.

Roz looked across at Leabie, deep in conversation with Walid.

'I can't help but wonder...'

'What things might have been like if you'd stayed home?'

She nodded. 'Something's going on here. Leabie's not telling me about it, but you can see the web of power forming and reforming... Doctor, there's going to be war.'

'And you think you could have prevented that.'

'Possibly,' said Roz. 'On the other hand, maybe I'd be the one running it.'

'You've accomplished a lot since leaving,' said the Doctor.

'First as an Adjudicator, then with me. None of that work would have been done if you'd stayed here and tried to '

' s.h.i.+ft the weight?'

He nodded.

'We're getting old, Doctor,' said Roz, with a wry smile. She waved at a waiter. 'Two extremely large and strong drinks, please.'

Midnight.

There was movement in the palace. More than the nocturnal activities of the servants, answering late-night calls, performing maintenance. Movement in the shadows where the lights were blinking off, one by one, and the cameras were dying.

A dozen murders happened in the s.p.a.ce of ten minutes. The security systems quietly crashed. A servant brought an initial report to Leabie in her boardroom, where she was still in conversation with the Duke. Chris snored. The Doctor and Roz were sitting in his room, talking politics, when the lights suddenly went out.

220.

Thandiwe screamed as the door to her bedroom shattered into pieces. A man stood in the doorway, peering inside with a weird bobbing movement of his head that made her think of the sims of vultures in her moving picture books. Her throat seemed to lock right up as the head swayed from side to side and then fixed in her direction.

The man came forward, his eyes locking on her. Thandiwe realized she couldn't make a sound. This was really happening.

A monster chewed through the roof of Somezi's bedroom and ripped him open before he even woke up.

Another smashed down the door of Leabie's boardroom.

'Again!' shouted Walid, pumping fifty rapid rounds from his personal plasma thrower into it.

Mantsebo tried to ward off the creature that had killed her bodyguard, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the man's laser weapon, but her aim was wide.

Security responded within minutes to contain the threat. But within minutes, a dozen Forresters had died.

Ostensibly Thandiwe's Fat Monster Eater was the same mid-range cybernetic comforter recommended ages one to four years as twenty-three per cent of the Empire's human population had owned as children.

Essentially it was a big floppy sphere slightly over a metre in diameter covered in short dirt-resistant fur. Its mouth had been designed using the latest kinderpsyche profiling to be large dough to give small children just the right frisson of fear when it opened all the way without scaring them witless.

Inside, the Fat Monster Eater was filled with a foam comprising billions of tiny bubbles a few millimetres across, each one containing its own heating element, actuator and pinbrain.

The actuators moved the bubbles around in concert to create facial expressions and interesting and playful lumps on its body; the heating elements varied the temperature within the bubbles to allow the Fat Monster Eater to achieve buoyancy at average room temperature and float around a child's bedroom in an amusing fas.h.i.+on.

221.

Right now the Fat Monster Eater was not amusing. Right now its big saggy mouth was wrapped around the head and shoulders of the monster that had come to kill Thandiwe.

She was screaming and screaming, a tiny, shrill sound, scrunched up on her bed while she hit the emergency b.u.t.ton over and over.

The distorted creature was struggling for its life, one arm caught inside the Fat Monster Eater's maw, the other raking at its bulk with metallic claws. It turned from side to side, trying to shake the toy loose or smash it against a wall. But the Eater had no single brain, no organs to damage. It clung on to its victim like a factory-standard Fat Monster Eater oughtn't to, slowly sucking more and more of the creature's body inside its own.

Security had taken over a minute to respond, almost overwhelmed by the distorted creatures in the corridor outside.

They saw Thandiwe on her bed, still screaming. They saw the Fat Monster Eater engulf its victim to the knees, its body stretched as far as it would go, foam pouring from its wounds, its baggy shape slowly slackening.

Everyone around her had simply gone to pieces. Roz forced her feelings down into a tiny corner of her being and concentrated on what needed to be done.

There was nothing to do. Security was tight, the threat was over, there was a pile of monster corpses in the central compound. There was nothing to do but pick up the pieces, the pieces everyone had gone to. Stay cool, you're needed.

She stood in the boardroom, where the surviving heads of security had gathered. They'd already rounded up every member of staff with a psi rating six were left alive and sent them home. Rumour had it they'd been shot, but Roz had watched them board a shuttle, bewildered and terrified.

Roz s.h.i.+fted her position slightly. She was holding Leabie, who was weeping uncontrollably, babbling in !Xhosa and tearing at Roz's clothes.

Chris was in another room, bouncing Thandiwe on his knee, telling her silly jokes. No one had told her clearly what had happened yet, why her mummy was so upset or why a monster 222 had come into her room. She wanted another Fat Monster Eater.

Everyone promised her one. Chris had been pale as the proverbial ghost, somehow managing to smile at the little girl.

Gugwani had been completely out of control with grief and terror. Both of her bodyguards had been killed by a man with four arms ending in mouths. Reinforcements had arrived a moment before the biting started.

And the Doctor sat on the bench at the window of Leabie's boardroom, head propped up in his hand, staring out at the surface of the moon. Completely still. Ignoring anyone who spoke to him. Of all of them, he was the one who worried Roz the most.

Duke Walid was standing nearby, looking as though he was desperate for something to do, someone to shoot. His clothes were torn, his dark hair in disarray, and Leabie's personal physician was fussing over a deep gash in his arm. Security's counterstrike had almost been a few seconds late for him. He'd saved Leabie's life.

'Who's behind this?' said the Duke, bewildered. 'Who has the power to create these monsters out of innocent people?'

Roz looked at him pleadingly, and he walked up to her, taking Leabie from her grasp. Thank you, Thank you, she mouthed. she mouthed.

'I'll see she's put to bed safely,' said the Duke. 'Come along, Leabie. There's nothing more we can do tonight.' He gestured to the physician, and they helped the devastated woman out of the room.

Roz watched her go. It was as though the grief had reduced her to nothing, just a wailing woman like anyone in a crowd, anyone in a news sim.

Roz sat down next to the Doctor. He didn't look at her. After a minute she realized he wasn't blinking, his eyes fixed on the landscape. She didn't know if he was even aware she was there.

It p.i.s.sed her off. What the h.e.l.l did he have to be shaken up about? He hadn't known Somezi and Mantsebo as babies. It wasn't his home the horror had invaded, his sister having hysterics in the next room.

223.

She leant against the gla.s.s, closing her eyes for a moment, suddenly aware of how tired she was. She'd come home, and she'd brought the monsters with her.

'They were after me,' he said.