Monster Planet(27)

With a grunt Ayaan emptied her buckets into a tub full of ice. She tried not to look at the hands as they slithered out, the fingers lacing together, the dry blood running out in a fine sift. She tried not to let the powder get into her mouth or nose.

When the buckets were empty she turned to go. She knew it was futile but she moved steadily, purposely toward the door.

'There's one more thing,' the green phantom said. She felt her body surge as he toyed with her metabolism. Would he wear her out, make her exhausted even though her shift was half over? Would he give her a goose, make her hyper until her jaw ached from grinding? His possibilities for amusement at her expense seemed endless.

'Yes, sir,' she said, wondering what demeaning errand he would have this time, and turned around.





Monster Planet





Chapter Fourteen


A human brain. In a jar.

Cyrillic characters ran around the top and bottom of the glass container, etched in a looping cursive hand. Inside the jar the brain floated in yellowish liquid, dangling from a web of silver chains. It was a human brain, most definitely, and most certainly it was dead. Ayaan lacked the sensory sensitivity of a lich but even she could tell that something had taken up residence in the disembodied organ. It didn't pulse or glow but then again, it sort of did.

A mummy carried the jar. Not just any mummy. The fiftieth mummy, the former high priestess of Sobk who had crocodiles painted like a print on her ragged linen. The last mummy, the one Ayaan had been about to slaughter when the ghost had appeared.

'Enough, enough, enough,' the ghost had chanted then, rushing into the room, possessing the crumbling flesh of a Cypriot ghoul in order to steal its voice. True intelligence had shown in its borrowed eyes and Ayaan remembered the story Dekalb, Sarah's father, had told her, of a creature that could inscribe its personality over the blank slates of the undead. A creature that had helped him in the final mad rush of corpses in Central Park. A creature that had a special affinity for mummies.

It had to be the same intelligence, the same spirit. The ghost which the Tsarevich so desperately wanted to contact had to be the thing that saved New York from Gary's final, horrible revenge. Ayaan had looked around the bunker and seen for the first time just what they had made her do and it gave her gooseflesh.

'Enough. Spare her and' I'll do as the lad wants,' the ghost had said. Its face fell'not with the torpor of the undead but with genuine sadness. 'Tell him he has me, you lot. Go and tell him now!' With its temporary hands the ghost had thrown over the bunker's table, smashed to kindling one of the chairs. Ayaan had been afraid, truly afraid that it would seek vengeance on her for what she had done.

If it was planning revenge it was taking its time.

'This is our beloved leader's friend. The ghost,' the green phantom told her, a week later in the officer's mess of the nuclear waste freighter Pinega. He waved a few bony fingers at the thing in the jar. 'We had to take steps to make sure he didn't run out on us again. He's shown himself a very slippery fish. Supposedly he has something he wants to tell you.'

'Me,' Ayaan said, rubbing her suddenly moist palms on her pants. 'Well, I suppose that makes sense. Um. Hello,' she tried.

Neither the brain nor the mummy so much as twitched. Across the room Cicatrix put down her magazine to watch. The green phantom rose and went to the icy trough where Ayaan had unloaded her grisly haul. He made no attempt at nicety, digging in to the bony meat in the trough like a starving animal. Between bites he managed to choke out, 'He says he wants you to know there are no hard feelings. He would have done the same in your position.'

'That's' I mean, tell him I'm grateful for his' his''

''Magnanimity' is the word that leaps to mind.' The phantom wiped clotted blood from his cheeks and lips with a silk napkin. 'He can hear you, you know. I don't have to translate for him.'

Ayaan nodded. 'So, well, thank you. And I am sorry. So truly, truly sorry.'

'He had something else for you'a message. I don't claim to understand it. He says she's just fine, and closer to your heart than ever.'

'She?' Ayaan asked. 'She who?'

'That's what he said. Listen, I can barely understand him myself. I won't be arsed to play twenty questions with him just to appease your curiosity. I'm sure it's just talking about its mummy friend. Get back to work.'

Ayaan nodded agreeably and backed out of the room. With a moment's thought she had answered her own question and she didn't feel like sharing. 'She' had to be Sarah, the only female person in the world Ayaan wanted to be alright. The brain's other statement wasn't so easy to decipher. Had it claimed that Ayaan was closer to Sarah's heart than ever it would have made perfect sense, though it would have conveyed nothing she didn't already know. It was possible the ghost lacked a grasp of the finer nuances of English idiom.