Jon Grimwood - redRobe

It was almost impressive. Most people would have stayed down after a blow to the head like that, bouffant head of greying hair or not. But Emilio was built like a bull, thick bones and thick hide and stupidly stubborn.

Axl had met the type too many times before to remember—and he hadn’t liked any of them any better then. So if Rinpoche was thinking of putting in an appearance, now would be a really good time.

Inside Axl’s brain blood flow increased to the amygdala, cortisol levels rocketed, adrenaline kicked in and stress jacked up the bmp to his backing track, step on step. It took less than a second.

But the darkening sky outside the window remained empty. Which wasn’t to say the silver monkey wasn’t keeping track, just that it was running to a different timescale. And besides, it was developing a thing for tight dramatic entrances. Which was fine, because that fitted well with Bon mythology. But then what did you expect from an ur-myth that said the high plateau of Tibet was really a naked goddess, arms and legs splayed wide, lying flat on her back?

Weird shit indeed.

‘Recognise me?’ Axl asked.

Stood upright, free hand carefully wiping the last specks of vomit from his neat salt and pepper moustache, Colonel Emilio looked carefully at the hard-eyed, gaunt man stood in front of him. He was dressed in the standard ‘fugee uniform of felt trousers, grey smock and old boots but there was something about the face, that chin… The right answer hovered briefly on the edge of his awareness and then it was gone.

‘Didn’t think so. Try five weeks back, La Medicina…’

Recognition hit and Colonel Emilio half raised his Uzi. ‘I should have killed you,’ the Colonel told Axl flatly.

‘Yeah,’ said a voice behind Axl. ‘Join the queue.’

defMoma and momaDef spun round first, and Rinpoche gave a little bow. Axl couldn’t be arsed, he already knew who it was and besides he was too busy watching, enjoying the shock in Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

Time stopped.

Or maybe it speeded up.

Whatever happened, the Colonel, Wireframes and the sergeant freeze-framed and the silver monkey kept talking as Axl walked over to the Colonel and lifted the excited Uzi gently from his fingers.

‘Tsongkhapa wants to talk to you.’

‘Tsongkhapa?’ Axl said, then realised Rinpoche was talking inside his head and the others couldn’t have heard it anyway. They were too busy hitting the high notes of a fugue.

‘Yeah,’ said the voice, ‘but first get rid of this lot.’

Get rid of them?

‘Get them out of this place, away from the Pope.’

Away from the… Axl stopped dead. He hoped he didn’t look as stupid as he felt. ‘There is no Pope,’ he said aloud. It was beginning to sound like a mantra and one too many other people seemed not to believe.

Rinpoche laughed. ‘Shit happens—and so does reincarnation. And guess what? Sometimes they’re the same.’ The silver monkey clicked its fingers and the fugue holding the others abruptly ended.

Like someone flipping out of a trance defMoma fumbled desperately for her gun and kept fumbling, fingers scrabbling at her belt until she remembered she was no longer wearing one. ‘What the fuck is that?’ She said crossly.

‘I’m a monkey,’ said Rinpoche, ‘made of fucking metal, with fucking wings. What the flying fuck do you think I am?’

‘I wasn’t briefed on this,’ said Colonel Emilio to no one in particular.

‘No,’ said Rinpoche, ‘I don’t imagine you were.’ It nodded at the lieutenant and then waved its paw towards Axl. ‘You know who this is?’

The woman shook her head.

‘Remember Axl Borja?’

She did. So did her sergeant, Rinpoche could tell from the way her huge shoulders tensed.

‘And you have both heard of Cardinal Santo Ducque?’ His voice was silkily sarcastic.

Something unspoken passed between the two women, brief as a blip of static. Anger, contempt, glee… Whichever it was, Axl didn’t like it, but the flicker of emotion wasn’t there long enough for him to identify it. All he saw was Colonel Emilio shake his head slightly at momaDef and defMoma.

‘Yes,' said the lieutenant carefully, ‘everyone knows the Cardinal.’

‘Well,’ Rinpoche’s smile was cold. ‘This man works for him. Something your Colonel already knows. And currently I work for Axl, sort of…’

With a sigh, Colonel Emilio dipped into a pouch on his belt and pulled out an olive grey Sony walkWear, military issue. In the time it took the machine to boot up, he’d unfolded a pair of floating-focus Raybans and clumsily velcroed a tiny keypad to the inside of one wrist.

Some sentient bloody spySat with delusions wasn’t what Colonel Emilio wanted. Not what he wanted at all. True, he’d heard rumours of another operative working the area, but Axl? And anyway, the idea was that the operative and PaxForce didn’t cross.

Sat on the window sill, Rinpoche grinned at the Colonel, thin lips pulled back to reveal extremely nasty-looking teeth. As if it too could see the frames and menus scrolling ghost-like and translucent beyond Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

And try as the Colonel might, the digital grab he’d taken of the silver monkey didn’t pull up any information on screen. Irritated, Colonel Emilio loaded another grab and reran the visual recognitions software. Absolute zilch. Between them, WorldBank, the IMF and PaxForce had the best military neural net in existence and so far as it was concerned the bloody monkey didn’t exist.

‘Classified,’ Rinpoche told him smugly and jerked his thumb at Axl. ‘Like his mission.’

The Colonel was about to say he was cleared for access to the highest levels but the words died as the Sony RomReader suddenly went dead and he could see nothing but sick-making white fuzz. And when he ripped off the Raybans, he got the silver monkey grinning at him.

‘You responsible for this animal?’ Colonel Emilio asked Axl, unstrapping the wrist-pad in disgust. . .

‘I think it’s probably the other way round,’ said Axl and the silver monkey suddenly looked at him, head turned sideways, as if it was vaguely impressed. Or at least, as if he wasn’t quite the idiot it had assumed.

Besides, given the endless scroll of crap he’d accepted without reading when he first bonded with the Colt, Axl was willing to lay odds that MacroShite had some sub-clause to say AIs reincarnating between hardware systems invalidated the agreement. ‘Look,’ said Colonel Emilio, ‘I think we should get the lines of command clear here…’

Nodding down to the revolver he was holding, Axl smiled. ‘I think we already did.’

Rinpoche grinned at the Colonel. ‘Missing you already.’

It tipped itself backwards off the stone sill, wings suddenly spreading and growing. By the time Colonel Emilio reached the open window, the animal was already riding up into the air currents, Cocheforet spreading small and isolated beneath it.

The Colonel and Axl reached a simple compromise. Probably the only one not to involve Uzis, revolvers and one of them actually having to shoot the other rather than just talking about it. PaxForce wouldn’t interfere with Axl’s mission, whatever that was, if he didn’t interfere with theirs.

By then Axl had already insisted that, in his opinion, there was no Pope Joan or Father Sylvester on Samsara and never had been. Joan was digital dust in backed-up newsfeeds. Unfortunately Axl didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

And Axl left out what Rinpoche had said to him. One, because he wasn’t sure it had ever happened and two, because, even if it had, he needed time to process the data.

‘So, you’re just at Cocheforet for the sightseeing?’ Colonel Emilio smiled and smoothed his moustache, then patted his hair into place and winced as his hand met the bump left by Axl’s revolver. He stopped smiling.