cube that had contained the copy of Dinas Emrys had melted and was letting off acrid black smoke.
On the cot I could see Rannu’s emaciated, ravaged body. His corpse. He was clearly dead. Merle and Cat were trying to change that. Smoke was pouring from all four of Rannu’s plugs.
I staggered to my feet still holding my neck and watched Cat ram a stim straight into Rannu’s heart. Merle then shocked him again and again. It looked merciless to my eyes. Rannu would live. He had to. This couldn’t have been for nothing. I couldn’t have put us all at risk for no reason. Besides, he was a tough bastard.
Rannu spasmed, his back arched and he threw himself around in his cot. I sank to my knees.
‘His heart’s beating,’ Cat said, sounding relieved.
‘He’s breathing,’ Merle said, matter of fact.
I felt someone hugging me. I looked down to see Morag. She looked up at me, so happy, and then like night falling she remembered what I’d done to her and pushed away. Even that didn’t affect how happy I was to see Rannu back. I turned around to see Mudge leaning against the cave mouth smoking a spliff and grinning.
20
I think the Kiwis’ home-brewed beer wouldn’t have seemed so bad if the entire world hadn’t tasted of rotten eggs. I’d bartered for the beer using some of the gear we’d got from one of Merle’s caches. Merle had revealed the whereabouts of another cache with ill grace. I’d pointed that it was his own fault that the first one had been compromised. I’d managed to score a laser pistol at the cache but I was still light on weapons. I had no chance of replacing my Mastodon or shoulder laser out here and nobody had an assault shotgun they were willing to give up. I was quite tempted to nick Merle’s Void Eagle but it would have just caused more trouble.
They’d cleaned Rannu up – he hadn’t been strong enough to do it for himself – and then moved him into the cave where I’d been imprisoned. It smelled a lot fresher. Even on this world. When I walked in Rannu was doing press-ups. The stylised biomechanical Kali tattoo on his back seemed to dance with the movement of his muscles.
Rannu looked up and then sat down on his cot. We’d spent quite a long time checking him out, making sure that the scary thing that Nuada had done had completely burned Demiurge out of him. As far as we could tell it had.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Tired, wrung out, very angry.’
I nodded and offered him a beer. He seemed about to refuse but changed his mind and accepted it.
‘What do you remember?’
‘I remember us escaping. I remember attacking the last pa thinking we were attacking Rolleston and his people. I remember being shown the truth…’ He faltered. ‘Then feeling like I was drowning in filth. The next thing I know I’m being resuscitated.’
His wrists and ankles all had open wounds from the manacles. His body was a patchwork of self-inflicted cuts and lesions, some of which had manifested spontaneously. Pagan had said this was the result of a particularly convincing and potent, self-inflicted biofeedback attack.
‘You’ve not left the cave much,’ I said.
Rannu didn’t look up. ‘We did some damage,’ he said. ‘Not just what we did, the things we said.’
‘It wasn’t us, you know that.’
If I could just convince myself of that then I might have a chance of convincing other people.
‘That’s not what they’re going to see, is it?’
‘Well, they’re just going to have to fucking live with it, aren’t they?’
Now Rannu looked up at me. ‘So are we.’
‘Frankly, I think that’s the least of our problems. You need out? You’ve been through the wringer.’
‘How could you even ask that?’ he demanded angrily.
We lapsed into silence, sipping our beers.
‘How come Morag hasn’t been to see me?’ he finally asked.
I thought about how to answer this. I didn’t think he wanted to hear that it was guilt over having written him off. She had been right: it had been a very risky proposition indeed. It only looked good now, seemed to be the right thing to have done, because it had paid off. It could have just as easily fucked everything up. She could explain it to him.
‘They got some stuff from when Nuada or whatever the fuck that thing was burned Demiurge out of you. They also found some stuff in my head. They think they may have a way to hack Demiurge without it noticing. She’s been pretty busy, man. Why don’t you go and see her? You’ve got to get to used to angry Maoris staring at you because you killed their friends.’
He laughed but it was pretty humourless.
I stayed and bullshitted for a while. It didn’t take long to run out of things to say. There was too much mutual guilt floating around in that cave. I made my excuses and left. Not that I had much to do except try and get back to a reasonable degree of fitness and wait for the hackers to let us know what they’d found.
‘That was touching.’ Morag was leaning against the rock wall outside Rannu’s cave.
I turned on her. ‘Okay. I’ve got it. You’re angry at me, you hate me, but don’t take it out on him. Don’t tell him what you said, just deal with your own fucking guilt and go and see him,’ I told her quietly. I didn’t want Rannu to hear.
‘Pagan wants to see everyone.’
‘Fine. We talk in there with Rannu.’
She shook her head. ‘Dinas Emrys.’
‘Fucking whatever, but he can bring his staff here. I’ll tell the others. Why don’t you go in and see him?’
She glared at me but turned towards Rannu’s cave. I grabbed her by the arm.
‘When are we going to talk?’
‘Don’t fucking touch me!’ It was loud enough that heads turned in our direction.
‘Morag? You okay?’ Rannu asked from inside the cave. Morag shook me off.
‘Your touch fucking sickens me.’
Rannu was at the cave mouth. ‘You okay?’
She turned and hugged him, hiding her face from me. I walked off. The selfish arsehole part of me told me that her hugging Rannu had been for my benefit. I looked up to see Little Henry and Strange watching me intently. Little Henry had been avoiding me since I’d killed his whanau brother; now he was walking towards me. Strange remained still and just stared at me.
‘Pagan wants to see us all in Rannu’s room,’ I said when he was close enough.
‘The last of the supplies from the heist are in,’ he told me, ignoring what I’d said. The short guy with the bowler hat had been the warmest and most approachable of the whanau; now there was no trace of his previous warmth or friendliness.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Surely you guys are handling the distribution?’
‘It wasn’t food or ammo. Mother said you should see this.’
‘Can’t you just tell me?’ I asked, looking at him and then Strange suspiciously.
‘Trust me. You’ll want to see this.’
I was reasonably sure I could handle Big Henry and Strange if it got nasty. They led me out of the pa, through tunnels and into a cave used as a garage because it connected to some of the larger tunnels used as a road system. Ground lights illuminated the battered civilian cargo lorry.
The modular cargo container on the back of the truck was freshly painted and I suspected it had come off the back of one of the vehicles we’d hijacked. Big Henry went to the back of the container and opened the double doors. Glancing at him and Strange, I moved around and looked in.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘We thought you’d want to see,’ Big Henry said coldly. Strange was swaying back and forth as if in
