INSTANTLY, OR AS close to instantly as made no difference, the microwave transmissions that Mallahide was currently using for thoughts had reached the edges of the main body of the swarm. In the night sky over London the cloud of machines immediately began to flatten and spread out. Tendrils of Mallahide reached for the surface: billions upon billions of his molecule-size machines drifted down towards the London streets like a rain of near-invisible ash.
Mallahide was angry and hurt by what Anna had said. To him, the situation was clear. The human race was failing to make the right choice. They were failing to join him. Without his intervention they would fail to reach their potential, fail to become like him. So (he told himself) only one course remained open to him.
It was time to make the choice for them.
In the West End below, the first bars and pubs were starting to close. For a frenetic hour or so the pavements and Tube stations would be bustling with humans, many of them rowdy, many of them happy, most of them in some state of intoxication.
They didn’t know what hit them.
It wasn’t at all how it had been with Anna. Perhaps (Mallahide reflected) that had been part of the problem: if there had been enough of him in the room with her to make the dissolution process as quick as he was now capable of making it, then Anna and that ‘Chris’ boy might not have resisted him in the way they had. When the main mass of the Mallahide swarm hit the crowds thronging the West End, it was quite different.
Now people just began to disappear.
It happened so fast that those whose turn had not yet come didn’t even notice it at first. But young men and women all over the West End suddenly weren’t there any more. Their partners and friends would turn and look: their last thoughts before being transfigured themselves would be, Where’s X gone? She was here a second ago – then they too would vanish, rendered down into their constituent atoms and meticulously recorded by the expanding swarm of Mallahide’s astonishing little machines. For a full three minutes, nobody realized what was happening. Then—
Pandemonium.
Everyone still standing made a rush to get off the streets – stampeding into Tube stations, desperate to escape. But they didn’t escape. Escape was impossible. No matter how hard they struggled or screamed or cried, Mallahide caught them just the same.
To Mallahide, the sudden vast influx of information was almost overwhelming. Scores of entire lives – ambitions, dreams, griefs, loves – poured into him. His billions of pristine digital fingers sifted it all. And the skills and talents! Mallahide could take what he wanted: cookery, kickboxing, parkour, human resource management – Human resource management? he thought, interrupting himself. Well, why not? When the time came, everything might be useful. Anything was possible in the new world order that was coming – except one thing.
He couldn’t let these people be free. He couldn’t convert them properly – not in the sense that they would be allowed the ability to choose their own paths or make their own decisions – not for the time being. They might band together and try to stop him. They might overthrow him, taking control of the swarm. They might threaten his plan, and that was something he could not tolerate.
No. He was the first posthuman. As Anna had failed to understand, he knew best. The new converts would simply be stored, suspended, kept in a holding pattern until Mallahide was ready to return their freedom to them. And in the meantime the swarm would remain under his exclusive control.
It wasn’t a betrayal of his principles, he told himself: not at all. He was doing this for the people’s own good. There was plenty of time for freedom later, he told himself, once his task was complete. For now, all he needed was to get bigger, stronger, increasing his swarm until it was the size it needed to be.
There was, after all, a whole world to conquer.
‘And – yes – following on from this morning’s incredible events in Hyde Park, we’re now receiving reports of some kind of incident taking place in the West End. It appears that the strange cloud that has formed over London – the freakish phenomenon newspapers have dubbed the “Mallahide Swarm” – is now on the attack. Exact numbers of casualties are hard to estimate at present because . . .’
Sitting in the news studio, Fiona Pilkington paused again. She ought, she supposed, to have become used to incredible things by now. But what she was hearing shocked her more than anything else she’d been required to announce so far.
‘I’m sorry. All over the West End, men and women seem to be vanishing into thin air. Now, to explain these astonishing reports as best we can, we go live once more to Nelson Akubwe, who is there at the scene as we speak. Nelson . . .?’
She spun in her chair to face the studio wall screen, unable to mask the small sag of relief in her back as she slumped a little once the camera was off her.
‘Well, Fiona,’ said Mr Akubwe breathlessly, ‘I apologize right now for the jerkiness of the footage, but as you can see, the scene here is one of total panic and confusion, and I and my team, like everyone else, have been forced . . . to run . . . for our lives!’
The shrieks of the stampeding crowd were clearly audible in the background of Mr Akubwe’s voice-over. The orange streetlights wove crazy trails across the screen whenever the cameraman turned in a new direction. But everywhere were people, running and jostling, screaming and crying. And whenever the soft grey tendrils of Mallahide reached down and found their marks in the crowd, people froze – opened their mouths – and vanished.
‘We’re under attack!’ shouted the young journalist over the din. ‘London is under attack! The cloud seems to be reaching down into the streets and . . . destroying us!’
On-screen, the view from the cameraman’s shoulder rounded a corner, then juddered to a halt. Throughout the next part of the transmission the view slowly bobbed up and down as Mr Akubwe and his crew gasped for breath.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ he said. ‘We’re . . . we’ve just taken shelter in an alleyway off Leicester Square. From here, we’ll . . . continue to broadcast our report as best we can.’ He straightened up and squared his shoulders as he faced the camera.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘when Professor Mallahide first appeared, there were those who dismissed him as a hoax – some kind of publicity stunt that went out of control.’ He shook his head. ‘Tonight we’ve seen the truth. The attack began without warning: as we speak, innocent civilians are being targeted and . . . dissolved! And, ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid this is only the beginning: I—’
He paused and went pale. ‘Oh God,’ he murmured. ‘It’s coming.’
The orange streetlamps that were lighting the scene seemed to go dim, as if an enormous shadow was falling across them.
‘Get off the streets!’ shouted Mr Akubwe as quickly as he could. ‘Stay in your homes and shut all your windows and doors! What else can we do? Who can save us now?’
Then he froze. Silhouetted in a kind of orange-grey haze for a moment, the hapless journalist opened his mouth to scream. His face and body held their shape for another second – then burst apart into nothingness and TV static. The screen went blank.
‘Nelson?’ asked Fiona Pilkington. ‘Nelson?’
There was no answer.