Hive Monkey Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cole?”
    “Yes?”
    “If it turns out you’ve done anything despicable to warrant this murder attempt, I’ll throw you off this ship myself. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Perfectly clear, Captain. And thanks.”
     
     
    T EN MINUTES LATER , William Cole found himself alone in a narrow cabin in the central gondola. In contrast to the passenger cabins, which were comparatively spacious, the crew cabins were narrow and utilitarian, with barely enough room to stand beside the bunk bed that took up the majority of the available space. There was no window, and nowhere to sit. The room smelled of garlic, farts and old cologne. Moving carefully in the confined space, William changed into a pair of pyjama trousers and an old t-shirt. The covers on the top bunk were mussed and grubby, so he climbed into the unused lower bed and closed his eyes.
    He could hear his pulse thumping in his ears. The three hours since the explosion had been a frantic rout. Still groggy from the blast, he hadn’t bothered waiting for the police to arrive. Instead, he was up and moving as soon as he felt able to stand. During last year’s nuclear standoff with China, he’d developed an emergency plan in case the missiles flew, and now, he was following it. He wasn’t going to hang around and wait for a second gunman to come looking for him.
    Shaking off the protests of his neighbour, he crossed the road, taking care to give the burning car a wide berth, and picked his way into his apartment. The bomb blast had strewn fragments of glass across the front room, and they crunched beneath his shoes as he gathered up his passport and bank cards and stuffed them into his pockets. His hands were shaking. This wasn’t drug paranoia: somebody really was trying to kill him.
    He had a rucksack ready packed, containing everything he needed, from first aid supplies to powdered food and iodine tablets. It was his ‘bug-out’ bag, and it was stashed beneath his bed, where he could find it in the dark. All through the international crisis, he’d felt better knowing it was there. He knelt down and pulled it out by its canvas straps. He grabbed the electronic notebook containing the handwritten first chapters of the book he was working on, stuck it in a side pocket, and added a couple of spare batteries. Then he was out of the door and clattering down the concrete steps to the block’s basement garage. He owned an old Renault with ninety-four thousand miles on the clock. It took him as far as the skyliner passenger terminal at Filton, where he abandoned it in the long-stay car park without a backward glance.
    This was his plan: get airborne, and ride out the crisis. If somebody wanted him dead, he wasn’t going to stick around long enough for them to take another pop. Better to get airborne and keep moving while he figured out his next move.
    The gunman—if indeed the ape-like thing in the car had been a man—had been killed, but that didn’t mean the danger had passed. The creature had been a pawn, and his death simply a way to protect the person, or persons, that had hired him. William knew enough to understand that the first rule of covering up an assassination was to kill the assassin. It had just been luck that the bomb had blown prematurely. Once whoever was behind the attack discovered their man had failed, they’d send somebody else, sure as eggs were eggs. The only thing that puzzled him was who ‘they’ might be. As far as he knew, he had no enemies. An obsessive fan would have acted alone and, as far as he knew, he hadn’t said or written anything to anger extremist groups of any persuasion. He simply didn’t have that many readers.
    After all, he thought as he lay on the bunk in the Tereshkova ’s cabin, who pays attention to science fiction writers, anyway? We’re the motley fools of literature. We caper and dance on the page, and nobody takes us seriously—certainly not seriously enough to send assassins.
    The mattress felt firm beneath