Hive Monkey by Gareth L. Powell Page B

bad. Beneath the scratches, his face was pale, and his eyes bugged out. His breathing came in heaves.
    “Yeah,” the monkey said, growling around his unlit cigar. “Because bursting into rooms waving guns is a very good way to get your fucking head blown off.”
    Cole looked between them. Sweat glistened on his balding forehead.
    “I want to report a murder.”
    Victoria sniffed the barrel of the gun she’d picked up. It had been fired recently.
    “Have you killed somebody, Mister Cole?”
    “No!”
    “Then, tell me, what’s happened?”
    Cole swallowed. “A man came into my cabin.” He pulled experimentally at the cuff on his right wrist. The chain rattled. “He looked just like me. He said he’d come to help, that somebody was trying to kill me.”
    “But you already knew that.” Victoria weighed the pistol in her hand. “You told me as much when you came on board.”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you shoot him?”
    Cole shook his head. “He was already wounded. I didn’t realise at first.”
    “And now he’s dead?”
    “I think so, yes.”
    Victoria turned to one of the stewards. “Get a medic to the chef’s cabin. Go armed. Report back.”
    The man gave a salute, and left the room.
    Cole squirmed in his chair. “I didn’t kill him. That’s his gun you’re holding. He gave it to me before he—” He swallowed again. “Before he died.”
    Victoria looked him up and down. She knew he hadn’t smuggled the gun aboard himself. Given his claim that somebody had tried to kill him, she’d made sure his bag and clothing had been thoroughly searched.
    “All that remains to be seen,” she said. “In the meantime, I’d like you to take a deep breath, and start from the beginning.” As a former correspondent, she’d had plenty of practice at talking to the distraught. She slipped off the military jacket and draped it over the back of her chair, to make her look more informal. Then she sat and placed her hands on the desk, palms down. “Now,” she said as calmly as she could, “who was this man? Did you recognise him?”
    Cole’s jaw tightened. “Of course I recognised him!”
    Beside his chair, Ack-Ack Macaque spat out his cigar. “Then who was he? Don’t keep us in suspense.”
    Cole turned a baleful eye on him.
    “I told you. He was me .”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    DOPPELGANGER
     
    T HE DEAD BODY lay wrapped in its habit, on a bunk in the Tereshkova ’s infirmary. Ack-Ack Macaque looked from it to the man standing at the foot of the bed.
    “That,” he said, “is fucking uncanny.”
    Standing next to him, Victoria Valois was forced to agree. Aside from a few cosmetic differences—tidier hair, a better maintained beard, and a bullet hole in the stomach—the man lying on the bed seemed to be the exact double of William Cole. At the end of the bed, Cole himself seemed transfixed.
    “He said his name was Bill,” he said.
    “Who is he?”
    “I don’t know.” Cole’s hands were crossed in front of his chest. Despite the cold, he still wore only a t-shirt and pyjama trousers. “But he said he’d come to warn me. Something about a virus.”
    “Any idea what he meant?”
    “Sorry, none.” With nails bitten down to the quick, the writer scratched at each of his wrists. “What happens now? Do we go to the police?”
    “No.” Victoria looked up at the ceiling. She felt warm and tingly inside. First the Gestalt guy, and now this? So many questions suddenly needed answering. “The Tereshkova is mine.” She pulled the Commodore’s white dress tunic more firmly onto her shoulders. “For now, I’ll lead the investigation.”
    “But—”
    “No buts.” She fixed Cole with her firmest stare. “The local flics don’t get a sniff of this.” She panned her gaze around the assembled faces. “Do I make myself clear?”
    One by one, they nodded their assent. They knew as well as she did that international treaties protected the autonomy of each skyliner: that each functioned as an