the trigger, bang, and pull it again because somehow I managed to miss at a range of about half a meter — bang — and there's blood all over the inside of the door and a faint distant tinkling of cartridges rattling as they bounce off the screen of the PC.
I gasp for breath and gag at the stench. The thing on the floor — at least, what the Tillinghast resonator is showing me — has been dead for weeks. **What just happened again?** I ask Ramona.
**Billington.** She opens her eyes and I push myself into her head. She's still underwater, but she's not sitting in the control chair on board the submersible grab anymore: she's free-swimming in near-total darkness, stroking upwards alongside the drill string, and I can feel the exhaustion as a tight band across the tops of her thighs. **It's a doublecross.** I can taste her fear.
**Talk to me!** I force myself to bend over and go through the corpse's pockets. There's another magazine for the pistol, and a badge: some species of RFID tag. I take it and glance around the cabin. My right hand is still bleeding but it doesn't look as bad as it feels. (Memo to self: do not make a habit of gripping the slide of an automatic pistol while it is being fired.) **How long have I got? Where are you?**
**The grab — I was halfway home when one of the docking splines engaged, and the control deck disconnected and stayed stuck on the pipe string while the payload kept going up. It's got to be intentional. He was planning on leaving me down there all along!** I can feel the panic, ugly and personal and selfish and pitiful.
**Hang in there,** I tell her. **If you can make it to the surface we can pick you up — **
**You don't understand! If I stay down here too long I'll begin the change — it's hereditary! I've put it off this long by staying on land most of the time, but I'm an adult and if I spend too long in the deeps I begin to adapt, irreversibly. And if I do that, my daemon will decide I'm trying to escape ...**
**Ramona.** I find I'm breathing fast and shallow.
**Listen to me — **
**Billington knows! He must know! That's why he sent the guard to kill you! He'll have McMurray under arrest or dead or worse!**
**Ramona. Listen.** I take a deep breath and try to focus on air and dry land. **Listen to me. Feel through my skin.
Breathe through my lungs. Remember where you come from.** I stand over a cadaver and force myself to think of lush green landscapes. **You were able to let me share youi metabolism when I nearly drowned. Let's try doing it the, other way.** Breathe. Keep breathing for two people, lest one of them start sprouting tentacles and scales. It's not as easy as it sounds: you should try it one day.
**You've got to get off the ship!**
**How do you know what Ellis is doing?** I ask. I step over the body and into the corridor. It's even less welcoming, stinking of the grave, of soil and darkness and blind burrowing things. First door on the right, up the stairs, left, corridor — **Pat and I have a back channel.** Ramona concentrates on swimming, letting the calming repetitive motions occupy her mind. (Is it my imagination, or is it beginning to get slightly less dark?) **Last time he checked in he warned me about the scuttling charge. He figured Billington would have you taken off the ship, along with Eileen. Next thing, he drops the block between us. That's all I know, I swear!**
**Uh-huh.** The stairs feel as if they're on the edge of crumbling beneath my shoes, maggot-riddled boards creaking warnings to one another. The air is turning clammy. Keep breathing, I remind myself. **You haven't been entirely honest with me, have you? You and Pat. You've been using that block of his to keep me from dumpster- diving your head for intelligence. Playing me like an instrument:**
**Hey, you're a fine one to talk!** Too late: I realize she's glimpsed my memory of Mo's briefing. Secure the geas generator.
**You guys want it, too.**
**No,** I say grimly, **we want to stop anyone from getting it. Because if you think through the political implications of a human power suddenly starting to play with chthonian tech, you need to ask yourself whether BLUE HADES would view it — ** Creepy violin music in the back of my head raises the hair on the nape of my neck, just as I round the corner at the top of the stairs and come face to face with another zombie in a black uniform. He's got an MP-5 in a tactical sling at the ready, but I've got adrenalin and surprise on my side — I'm so jittery that I pull the trigger three times before I can make myself stop.
** — as a Benthic Treaty violation,** I finish, then draw a deep breath and try to stop my hands shaking. **What's with all the zombies? Is Billington killing his optioned employees as a tax dodge or something?**
**I don't know.** She takes out her frustration on the water. **Will you move it? You've got maybe six minutes to get off that ship!** Secure the geas generator. The corridor seems to pulse, contracting and dilating around me like a warm fleshy tube — a disturbingly esophageal experience. The smell of decay is getting stronger. I pick up the MP-5, managing not to lose my non-existent breakfast as the zombie's neck disintegrates.
I brush rotting debris off the sling, stick the pistol in my pocket, and let Ramona take over my hands to check the burst selector on the machine pistol. I duck-walk down the passage and then there's a crossway and another door opposite me. I open the door to the owner's lounge — I've got company. 'Well, if it isn't the easily underestimated Mr. Howard!'
She smiles like a snake. 'Better not squeeze that trigger, all the carbines are loaded with banishment rounds in case the Black Chamber tries something — you'll fry the generator if you shoot. And you wouldn't want to do that, would you'
It's Johanna Todt, McMurray's thugette. It's funny how she's nothing like as glamorous when I'm sharing my eyeballs with Ramona: or maybe it's something to do with the combat fatigues, life preserver, and smudged make- up, not to mention the stench of ancient death she drags around like a favorite toy she can't bear to let go of. She's standing behind the diorama at the center of the geas generator grid, holding a hammer about ten centimeters above the Bond-mannequin's head. Whoops. I'm still trying to think of something to say when Ramona takes the initiative: 'Fancy meeting you here, dear.
Did Pat deep-six you or did you decide you needed a bit more bargaining power'
'Ramona?' She cocks her head to one side. 'Ah, I should have guessed. Three's a crowd: Why don't you butt out, bitch'
I manage to temporarily regain control of my larynx: 'She stays,' I say. Remember to breathe deeply, I tell myself. My doubled vision is beginning to annoy me: the light around Ramona is definitely brightening towards a predawn twilight.
I try to keep the MP-5 pointing in Johanna's general direction, but she's right — if I start shooting, I'm as likely to take out the geas generator as hit her. 'What are you doing here'
'Unlike some, I know who I'm loyal to. I figured I'd help myself to the leftovers at the rich man's buffet, seeing I've just armed the scuttling charges. And aren't you just the dish? I think you'll do for starters.' Johanna's grin widens, carnivorously: I catch a whiff of breath that's not so much stale as cadaverous, reeking of the crypt. 'I can disentangle you, 'Mona, did you know that? I can even unlock your binding without killing McMurray. I stole his tokens while I was helping him consider the error of his ways down in the brig.'
She turns her free hand so that I can see she's holding a small plastic box. 'It's all in here. I own you both.'
Breathe. Ramona tenses and kicks harder towards the light. Her buttocks are a solid slab of agony: she's swum nearly a kilometer straight up, and she's beginning to tire of struggling, of fighting off the adaptive stress that seductively taunts her, the knowledge that if she just uses her other muscles everything will become so much easier — 'So what do you want with us?' I ask, taking a short step towards her.
'Stop. Don't move.' She stares at me. 'I want you to adore me,' she says, almost wistfully. 'I want you to be my body.
'Mona, give him to me and I'll even set you free, Ellis doesn't need to know — '
For a moment I'm in Ramona's body, swimming free towards a surface that is slowly brightening: it's still a dim twilight, utter darkness to merely human eyes, but I can see shapes in the murk above me. Half of the horizon is dominated by a huge, black shadow that the drill string disappears into, and there's another dark silhouette in the near distance.
I'm in control, I'm the one who's swimming with unfamiliar legs and weaker upper arms — I begin altering course towards the distant, dark shape in the water — Meanwhile, Ramona is in my body, and she's dropped the MP-5 and is halfway across the perspex lid covering the diorama, making a noise in the back of her throat that I've heard when two cats get serious about their territory. Johanna whacks the hammer hard, off the back of my neck —
