Black Swan (Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow) Page 5

  “Merci, Monsieur!” Ulysses called, swinging the cane backwards and into the surprised clutches of its owner.

  He heard the angry roar of the gorilla and the clatter of mechanical components as it came a cropper amidst the smashed squashes. He knew his little obstacle didn’t have a hope of stopping the beast but it might slow it down a tad.

  And then they were passing over the Île de la Cité itself and skidding across the second span of the Pont Neuf.

  “Where are you going?” Ulysses demanded. He didn’t like being so reliant on anyone other than his redoubtable manservant Nimrod, and he hadn’t seen the old chap in months. It was even worse when he was somewhere he wasn’t as familiar with as he was his precious London.

  “Look, don’t start asking me where I’m going,” Cadence threw back. “I know what I’m doing!”

  Ahead of them, on the landward side of the bridge, where the Pont Neuf met the crosswise Quai des Grandes Augustins, a large removals lorry blocked the way ahead.

  Cadence slammed on the brakes even harder than before, leaning into the skid as the contraption swung left, its back wheel locking for a moment again. And then, the engine snarling like a caged beast, they were rocketing away, heading east along the south bank of the Seine, the river itself only a few yards away to their left.

  Cars, buses and lorries came at them head-on, with more horns blaring and headlights flashing, their drivers raging in impotent fury at the girl on the bike, as she turned the velocipede onto the pavement. Besides, they soon forgot about the girl when the ape came into view.

  Cadence sent tourists and Parisians running for cover, tumbling to left and right as she steered the speeding bike along the sidewalk.

  The partially retracted left wing hit a stall selling tourist tat and Ulysses thought he heard something vital snap.

  He was trying to see what damage the wing had suffered when the gorilla landed on top of an artist’s riverside gallery, demolishing the flimsy wooden structure beneath its heavy, iron-braced forearms, sending oil-painted canvases of famous Parisian landmarks flying in all directions, like garishly-plumed birds of paradise taking to the skies.

  “Look out! Look out!” the parrot screeched, its synthesised voice possessed of a rather convincing degree of fear and alarm.

  The gorilla turned another sales pitch to matchwood as it smashed its way through in its pursuit of the accelerating velocipede, this time sending a cascade of miniature gargoyles and grotesques crashing into the road.

  Cadence cried out. Ulysses snapped his head back round, facing forwards again in an instant.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he gasped, seeing the gaggle of frantic nuns scattering before them.

  A lorry hurtled past to their immediate right, clipped the tip of the other wing, and then there was nowhere else for them to go.

  Giving the throttle all she had, Cadence pulled the velocipede hard left. It climbed the makeshift ramp provided by a stack of second-hand books and took off over the parapet of the river wall as the speedometer needle registered forty-four miles an hour.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Silverback of Notre Dame

  AND THEN THEY were flying.

  The pitch of the velocipede’s engine rose as the contraption soared through the air with startling grace, the formidable façade of Notre Dame appearing over the tops of the trees that lined the Quai de Montebello further on. The Seine was a colourless mirror below them, its surface presenting a rippling inverted impression of the buildings lining its sculpted banks. Ahead of them, only a few tantalising yards away, rose the stone wall of yet another of the many bridges that connected the Île de la Cité to the rest of Paris.

  Ulysses held his breath and clung on, his arms tight around the Cadence’s waist.

  Forty-four miles an hour, she had said, that was the magic number. With Cadence’s fingers still tight on the throttle that was what the speedometer was reading now, only they weren’t flying – they were falling.

  The damage sustained by the extendable wings had resulted in them becoming twisted at the wrong angle. Ulysses realised the tail had been knocked out of kilter too and was no longer helping to stabilise the vehicle’s arcing flight over the Seine. If anything, it was causing it to wobble so that Ulysses feared the girl might lose her battle to control the bike altogether.

  In that moment of heightened stress he held his breath, taking in everything around him in minute detail. He saw the parapet of the bridge looming before them, the reflection of the bike upon the waters below, the enraged face of the bellowing beast as it extricated itself from the splintered remains of an artist’s stall behind them.

  “Come on! Come on!” Cadence hissed at the velocipede.

  “Come on! Come on!” the automaton cried from the pannier.

  And then the velocipede touched down. The back wheel clipped the parapet, throwing the contraption forward, both engine and tyres screeching as traction was achieved, and in the next instant the bike hared off again.

  Cadence swore fruitily as she tried to retain control of the wildly weaving bike at the same time as trying to dodge the slow-witted gawping members of the public who hadn’t yet had the good sense to get out of the way.

  It wasn’t that she was particularly trying to preserve anyone’s life, other than her own and that of her passenger. It was just that if they collided with someone, chances were they would be thrown off the velocipede and left at the mercy of the pursuing primate.

  Within seconds – having avoided a smoky haulage wagon, charabancs painted in the colour of the French flag, and a bicycle-riding onion salesmen – they were careening across a pedestrian crossing, to a chorus of screams from nurses pushing perambulators and the abusive shouts of cantankerous old men armed with gnarled walking sticks, and onto the cobblestoned square that lay in the shadow of the Western Façade of Notre Dame cathedral.

  The bestial roar had Ulysses looking back over his shoulder and Cadence revving the throttle again, steering the velocipede between the crowds of tourists and the unlicensed salesmen trying to flog replicas of the cathedral in myriad forms to the susceptible – everything from clumsy watercolours, through mass-produced ceramic casts of the Western Façade, to machine-stamped key-fobs.

  The gorilla exploded from the stand of stalls at the edge of the square, sending easels and prints spinning through the air like a flight of startled pigeons to the screams of the terrified tourists.

  “Shit!” Cadence gasped, catching sight of the beast out of the corner of her eye.

  “Look out! Raawk!”

  With a swipe of one massive arm, the monster caught the tail fin of the velocipede, pulling the assembly away from the bike. Momentum kept the contraption hurtling forwards but it was wildly out of control now.

  Panicking people fled before them, scattering left and right as the bike ploughed onwards, the façade of the cathedral looming large now ahead of them.

  Cadence applied the brakes and nothing happened.

  She swore again, and yanked hard left on the handlebars.

  The velocipede went into a skidding slide, engine parts kicking up fat sparks from the cobbles as they made contact with the ground.

  “Off!” Ulysses shouted, as the velocipede piled into the railings erected in front of the cathedral.

  The fence had probably never been intended to stop hurtling steam velocipedes from damaging the eight hundred year-old stonework, but right now it had that fortuitous effect nonetheless.

  “And don’t even think about saving the parrot!”

  Pulling the gasping girl after him, Ulysses barged through the sluggish, startled crowds at the entrance and into the gloom of the cathedral’s interior.

  Usually he would have done anything he could to keep innocent bystanders safe from harm but desperate times, as the saying went, called for desperate measures. He didn’t have the means to hurt the ape, he knew that, so his best bet was to try and trap it or trick it into injuring itself, somehow. He hadn
’t worked out the details yet. As ever, he was making it up as he went along.

  The life of his true love was what was really at stake here. Everything else – hunting down the Rue Morgue murderer, escaping the ape, proving himself innocent of the crime of which he had been accused by the gendarmes and popular public opinion – was all simply the means to one end. Saving Emilia Oddfellow from the fate that awaited her on the Moon.

  After the bright May sunshine outside, the medieval church seemed possessed of an almost preternatural gloom. It was as if they had stepped back in time.

  The tiny, high windows and subtle chandelier lighting dotted throughout the building kept things very much as Ulysses imagined the church must have looked when it was first finished some time in the 1200s. Of course the semi-darkness only served to make the stained glass all the more striking.

  Ulysses had visited Notre Dame once before, before making his world record-breaking attempt on the Paris-Dakar rally. Unfortunately now wasn’t the time for sight-seeing, but that previous visit had left him with a useful working knowledge of the layout of the cathedral, including the location of the chapels and shrines and tombs to various saints, churchmen and knights, along with the best place where you might be able to escape from a rampaging cyber-gorilla.

  “This way!” he said, pulling Cadence towards a narrow doorway half hidden behind wax-dripping candelabra and information signs.

  Yet more screams chased them all the way to the aged tower door. It was unlocked and turning the heavy iron handle, Ulysses pushed it open, setting off up the stone spiral staircase beyond.

  His legs burning, sweat pouring from his brow, he didn’t slow his pace one jot, taking the stairs two at a time, and hauling Cadence after him all the way.

  Their footsteps echoed throughout the spiralling passageway. Through the open door at the bottom of the staircase they caught distorted cries of alarm and gruff primate barks.

  But soon all Ulysses could hear was the pounding of their footsteps on the stone stairs, their breathless panting, and the dub-dub dub-dub tattoo of his own heartbeat in his ears.

  At last the staircase gave out onto a landing and from there, through another creaking door, the two gasping fugitives found themselves in the attic-like belfry of the cathedral’s South Tower. Curtains of dusty spider webs fluttered in the breeze while dried leaf litter had collected in the corners of the chamber, along with the debris of deconstructed pigeons’ nests.

  Apart from the contented cooing of a number of still resident pigeons, the fluttering of the spider webs and the ever-present breeze, the atmosphere within the belfry was still.

  The great bourdon bell, Emmanuel, hung before them in the gloom, verdigrised with age. It was an ancient thing that had marked the passing hours for more than three hundred years.

  “Hang on,” Ulysses said, his voice sounding loud within the stillness of the loft space, holding up a hand for quiet even though Cadence hadn’t said a word.

  “What?” she half-whispered.

  “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Indeed. That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “The ape,” Cadence said slowly.

  With a splintering crash that hurt their ears, half a ton of metal, meat and bad attitude burst through the belfry floor and landed with a crash in front of Ulysses, trailing broken floorboards. With the tower loft now open to the cathedral below, a cacophonous chorus of screams and panicked shouts rose to meet them.

  The gorilla locked its beady gaze on Ulysses and growled, nostrils flaring, its massive chest and shoulders heaving as it recovered its breath for a minute.

  Behind him, Ulysses sensed Cadence backing away towards the door.

  Ulysses flexed his hands.

  The ape took a purposeful step towards him, resting the great hairy knuckles of its ham-sized hands on the rough boards before it.

  Once again the dandy adventurer found himself wishing he had a gun or his trusty sword-stick to hand. But surely there was something here in the belfry that he could use to at least slow, if not actually stop, the beast?

  The first time he had run into the beast, it was the damage he had done to one of the ape’s mechanical components that ultimately saved him. The second time, he had had to play dead. If he couldn’t harm the brute physically, perhaps he would do best to try his original approach again and take out some vital component or other.

  The beast snorted and took another knuckling step forward. No matter what its controllers had set it to do, it was going to enjoy settling its grudge with the dandy, Ulysses was sure of it.

  Ulysses shot another desperate glance around the attic, at the peg-pinned joists, the exposed boards, the stone walls. Surely there was something here he could use?

  The gorilla shuffled its massive bulk forward another step.

  Ulysses took a wary step backwards, his one eye glancing from the killer gorilla to the beams and back again. If he could somehow work his way up onto one of those joists he might then be able to drop down onto the ape’s back and from there disconnect something vital from the primate’s cybernetic rig.

  All he needed was a distraction.

  But the ape had had enough. Rising to its full height, it beat its heavy fists on its broad, muscular chest, making a bellowing declaration of its murderous intent that left Ulysses in no doubt as to what it was planning to do to him.

  Once again Ulysses did the only thing common sense and instinct told him he could do, given the circumstances. He turned and ran.

  He heard the grunt of anger and effort as the ape kicked off behind him. The dandy barely managed to keep ahead of its bounding advance.

  The ape leapt again.

  One heavy steel vambrace clipped the Emmanuel, the thirteen tons of bell metal chiming in response.

  Ulysses threw his hands over his ears, his face a rictus of pain as the bell’s reverberations passed right through him, setting every bone in his body vibrating in response, or so it seemed. But he kept running for the door.

  Cadence was there, at the threshold to the belfry, doubled up, crippled by the pain of the great bell’s peal.

  Unable to stop himself, at the door Ulysses turned and looked back to see what had become of the ape.

  Whatever agony he was having to endure, it was nothing compared to the ape’s suffering.

  He could hear the great beast’s yowling over the reverberations of the bell as the animal staggered back across the belfry, its huge hands clutching its head.

  That was all Ulysses needed to know.

  Re-entering the loft space, gritting his teeth against the dolorous clanging, he picked up a broken end of floorboard and struck the bell again.

  His assault did little to raise another note from the bell, but did cause him to cry out in pain as his shoulder jarred at the impact. He tried again, in spite of the aching bullet wound, only this time his swing connected with the clapper.

  The first shock of the clapper the brazen wall made the framework upon which it was mounted quiver, and a clear booming note rang from its vibrating surface.

  The ape screamed again, its agonised hollering all but drowned out by the tolling of the bell.

  Barely-tamed lightning crackled around its electrode-implanted skull in a halo of electrical fire, the thick steel rods humming like tuning forks inside the ape’s brain.

  Ulysses dealt the clapper another resounding blow, feeling his teeth shaking in response to the thrumming bong the Emmanuel bell returned.

  The whole tower trembled; woodwork, leads, cut stones, all groaned at once.

  The altered primate could barely walk now. It stumbled backwards, eyes shut tight against the pain, its chisel-filled mouth open in one unending howl, sparks flying from its skull-rods.

  The animal’s eyes suddenly snapped open, the beady black pupils back-lit by the intense red glow of overheating metal components. But to Ulysses’ mind the crimson light was the unforgiving blaze of
interminable hatred.

  The ape took one more step back –

  –and disappeared through the hole it had made in the belfry floor. It dropped like it was half a ton of solid granite.

  With the great bell still thrumming behind him, Ulysses sprinted to the splintered gap and, apparently heedless of the risk to himself, hauled himself half over the edge to peer down into the vaulted void of the church below.

  But there was no sign of the ape. The stone-flagged floor far below was devoid of any cybernetically-enhanced primate carcass.

  He was so used to the continuing screams that he barely noticed their presence.

  Risking life and limb, pulling himself further through the hole, he peered down into the inverted cathedral, twisting his head this way and that.

  The clear high sound of breaking glass had him shifting his position again in time to see the gorilla swing from a supporting buttress and through the ornate rose window in the western end of the building. Broken glass rained down into the church, the work of medieval craftsmen that had survived the centuries up until that moment sparkling like cut diamonds in the sudden sunlight as the screaming ape fled the cathedral.

  And then the monster was gone.

  Pulling himself back up through the hole into the belfry, Ulysses rolled onto his back before scrambling to his feet and catching the look in Cadence’s eyes.

  “The chase is back on,” he said, an excited sparkle in his eye. “Only now the hunter has become the hunted.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Game is Afoot

  “YOU HAVE TO trust me on this,” Ulysses insisted as he and Cadence Bettencourt ran back down the worn stone staircase of the South Tower. “The ape won’t be interested in chasing us anymore.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Because I’ve seen something like this happen before.”

  Cadence grunted. She didn’t sound particularly impressed but she was still keeping up regardless. It seemed that she had decided that it was a better bet to keep Ulysses close than to lose him in the midst of this debacle.