Against A Dark Background (23 page)

Sharrow stood before the giant portrait of her grandfather in a private room of the overhang house. Bencil Dornay had offered to show her his personal shrine while a group of mime artists were performing in the reception room.

Gorko was depicted in the painting as a giant of a man with a huge, carved face and great bristling whiskers; his body looked exaggeratedly muscled under a tight riding tunic and the bandamyion mount beside him looked out of scale. Something like fire shone from Gorko’s staring eyes. The portrait was at one end of the narrow room, draped in plush hangings. Apart from the painting, the room was empty.

`Hmm,’ Sharrow said. ‘Fate preserve us from greatness.’

Dornay shook his head. `Dear lady, don’t let the mean-of-spirit infect you: He glanced at the tall portrait. ‘Greatness is his legacy, and our hope.’

‘Do we really need greatness, Mister Dornay?’ she asked him. He turned slowly and walked towards the doors at the far end of the room, and she followed him. ‘We must need it, my lady. It is all that leads us onward. With it we may dream. Without it, we merely subsist.’

‘But so often,’ she said, ‘the people we call great seem to lead us to destruction.’

‘Their own, indeed,’ Dornay said, opening the doors and ushering her into a small hallway. ‘And those around them, I dare say. But destruction can be a positive act, too; the clearing out of rot, the excising of diseased tissue, the brushing away of the old to make room for the new. We are all so loath to offend, to cause any pain. The great have the vision to see beyond such pettiness; do we curse the doctor for some small pain when it saves us a greater one? Does any worthwhile adult blame his parents for the occasional slap as a child?’

They descended by elevator to the party. ‘Your rhetorical questions disarm me,’ Sharrow told him.

‘You were to ask me something, I believe, good lady,’ Dornay said, as they walked into the dimly lit rear of the hall. In the centre, a complicated formal dance was in progress; people walked and skipped in knots that tied and untied across the floor. Sharrow thought the band looked bored.

‘Yes,’ she said. She stopped and looked at him. His eyes twinkled and he blinked rapidly. There was nobody nearby. She took a breath. ‘My grandfather left some information with your father; he passed it on to you.’

Dornay looked uncertain. ‘To me?’ he asked.

`By blood-fealty,’ she said.

He was silent for a few moments. Then his eyes widened. He took a deep breath. ‘In me!’ he gasped. ‘In me, dear lady!’ His eyes stared into hers. ‘How? What do I-? But, dear lady; this is a privilege! A singular honour! Tell me; tell me what I have to do!’

She looked down for a second, wondering how to put it. All the lines she’d rehearsed for this moment sounded wrong.

Then Dornay made a gulping noise. ‘Of course! Dear lady. . ‘

She looked up to see him biting his lower lip. Blood welled. He drew a white handkerchief from his robe, offered it to her. ‘If you will, my lady,’ he nodded delicately, looking at her lips.

She understood, and put the handkerchief in her mouth, wetting the end. When the end of the handkerchief was heavy with her saliva, she handed it back to him. He put it quickly to the cut. She wanted to look away, but found herself gritting her teeth instead. Dornay sucked on the handkerchief for a while, then dabbed at his lip with it until the blood stopped flowing.

‘Whatever I have to tell, I shall tell only you, dear lady,’ he told her. He took a few deep breaths. ‘Now, shall we . . .?’

The guests were stretched round the circular dance floor like the membrane of a bubble; she and Dornay were motioned forward so that they could see the dancers clearly.

They watched the dance develop for a minute or so. Dornay looked around as though searching for something, seeming to grow increasingly agitated. Finally he said, ‘Dear lady, shall we dance?’ and took her hand.

‘What?’ she said. ‘But-’

He pulled her out from the line of people facing the groups of dancers; he drew her to him, taking hold of her waist. She put her hands to his neck almost automatically. There was a strange sheen about his face, and a look of emptiness in his eyes. She felt herself shudder.

He stepped back, and began to move into and through the formal dancing groups; bumping into people, oblivious, drawing the start of protests from dancers whose backs he connected with, until they realised it was their host they were about to berate.

He moved on, pulling and pushing and manoeuvring her with him while she did her best to follow with her flawed, limp-hesitant step; they swept away across the wide floor, disrupting and destroying the carefully worked-out patterns of the ancient dance they had invaded.

Pushed and pulled, twirled and swayed this way and that, and trying to keep her feet out from under his, Sharrow had little chance to notice anybody else’s reactions as together she and Dornay brought the rest of the dancers to a staring, bewildered, incredulous halt. The band faltered, the tune stopped. Bencil Dornay danced on, round this way; back that. The band leader watched them, trying to nod in time somehow, then she had the band attempt some suitable tune. A few of the watching people started to form pairs and began to dance as well.

Sharrow looked into Bencil Dornay’s sweating, blank-eyed face, and felt a wave of revulsion course through her that almost made her gag.

Their course became a spiral, tightening gradually as Dornay turned and turned and turned in a closing, whorling twist of motion. They reached the coiled centre of their figure, and stopped. Then suddenly Dornay let go of her, spun round once, his white robe belling out, and dropped to the floor as though felled with an axe. His head hit the hardwood with a crack; she felt the impact through her feet and the bones of her legs. Somebody screamed.

She stood there open-mouthed, pushed back as people flooded forward to the white body lying under the dance floor lights. She stared, shaking her head.

‘Excuse me-’ Doctor Clave said, threading between the people.

Sharrow looked at her hands.

Miz came up to her, pulled her away. ‘Sharrow, are you all right? Sharrow?’

The guests continued to rush in from every side, packing and swirling round the huddle of people as though caught in a vortex.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What?’

‘What happened? Are you all right?’ His face swam in front of her, open and concerned.

‘I’m . . . I’m . . .’

There were gasps from the crowd of people. She saw some of them glance at her and look away. Miz pulled her further back. Dloan appeared suddenly between her and the crowd. Zefla was at her other side, putting an arm round her.

She saw one person work their way out of the knot of people pressing round the centre of the dance floor and walk towards her. It was Cenuij; he seemed to be writing in a small notebook.

He came up to where she stood, flanked by Zefla and Miz. He made a final emphatic dot in the notebook, clipped the pen back in, snapped it shut and put it in his robe. He glanced back at the crowd and shrugged. ‘Dead,’ he told them. He pulled a cheroot from his robe and lit it. ‘Told us what we needed to know, though.’ He looked past Zefla. ‘Hmm.’ He nodded. ‘Look; the bar’s free.’ He walked away.

The viewing-gallery was built like a steeply raked auditorium. Scattered throughout its thousand or so seats were only a few dozen people, most of them asleep. She sat alone.

Her field of view was almost filled by the giant screen; the giant screen was almost filled by Golter. The great shown globe turned with a smooth and stately inevitability, a silent thunder implicit in the monumental graduation of the changing, revolving face it presented to the darkness, and something of its immense scale apparent in the linearity of that vast unhurriedness.

It shone; a gigantic disc of blue and white and ochre and green, god-fabulous in extent and more beautiful than love.

She sat looking at it. She was muscularly slim and of about average height, perhaps a little more. She was quite bald; beneath her blonde eyebrows her blue eyes were held in tear-drop shapes by small folds in the outside corners; her nose was broad and her nostrils flared. She wore dark overalls and clutched a small satchel to her chest as she sat watching the planet on the huge screen.

The local police chief had been very understanding. He had known Mister Dornay personally, and only an urgent professional engagement had prevented him from attending the party himself. It must have been a terrible experience for her; he quite understood. An inquest would be held at a later date, but a simple recorded statement from her would almost certainly be quite sufficient. Doctor Clave had already determined the cause of death to be a massive brain haemorrhage; unusual, these days, but not unknown. She must not blame herself. Of course she was free to go; he perfectly comprehended her desire not to stay any longer than she had to in a place that now held such tragic memories for her. Anyway, he had no desire to detain her when she was the officially sanctioned quarry of the legally authorised but surely woefully misguided and arguably rather inhumane sect pursuing her; it would give him no pleasure whatsoever to have this horrible event occur within his jurisdiction. He was sure she understood.

Dornay’s private secretary was next to be interviewed; she left the police chief in Bencil Dornay’s study and joined the others in the house library, where Cenuij was making excited noises over a deskscreen.

‘Okay?’ Miz said, coming to meet her.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ she said,’but I’ve been told to get out of town.’ She nodded to Zefla and Dloan, who stood by Cenuij’s shoulder.

‘That’s it!’ Cenuij said, pressing a button to take a copy of the display. He tapped the screen with a finger. The glyphs shown there were all roughly the same; variations on an elaborate, whorled, criss-crossed shape formed from a single line. On the desk beside Cenuij sat the notebook he’d been drawing in just after Dornay had died; its small screen displayed a shape similar to those on the desk-screen. ‘That’s the one,’ he said excitedly. He tapped the notebook and one of the glyphs in turn. ‘Miykenns Capital, in Cevese script, Ladyr dynasty.’

Sharrow stared at the pattern drawn on the notebook-screen, seeing the single line leading into the complex glyph, its spiralled structure, and its central, tightening coil ending in a dot.

‘That was what we . . . traced?’ she said.

Zefla heard the catch in Sharrow’s voice, and put her arm round her.

‘Yup,’ Cenuij said, tearing the print from the desk-screen slot and grinning at it. ‘Shaky brush-work; a Cevese script scholar would have a fit-’

‘Oh, Cenny, for goodness sake. . .’ Zefla said.

‘-but that’s it,’ Cenuij said, smacking the print-out with the backs of his fingers. ‘Could contain a mistake of course, in the circumstances, but at the very least it’s Miykenns Darkside, almost certainly Miykenns Capital, and if these epicycles are right-’, he pointed at two small circles on one spiral, ‘- it’s in the time of the Ladyr dynasty.’

‘So, Malishu?’ Miz said.

Cenuij shook his head. ‘Doubt it, not then. Next, we have to look back to see where the capital was during the Ladyr dynasty.’ His lip curled slightly. ‘Could be anywhere. Knowing the Ladyrs, they sold it to the highest bidder.’ He turned back to the desk-screen. ‘Library: Miykenns; history; Ladyr dynasty. Display; the capital of Miykenns.’

The screen halved into text and a multi-layered holo map.

Miz peered. ‘Pharpech?’ he said. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘I have,’ Zefla said.

‘Congratulations,’ Cenuij told her, zooming the bewilderingly structured map then swooping the view back again. ‘You probably form part of a small and very exclusive club.’

‘Yeah,’ Zefla said, staring at the ceiling with a look of intense concentration on her face. ‘One of my lecturers used it as an example of a degenerated … something or other.’

‘Well,’ Cenuij said. ‘It was supposedly capital of Miykenns under the Ladyrs, eight hundred years ago.’ He scanned the text. ‘And hasn’t looked forward since. Last entry in the encyclopedia is - ye gods -twenty years ago; the coronation of King Tard the seventeenth. Prophet’s blood!’ Cenuij sat back in surprise. ‘”No pictures available.”‘

‘A king?’ Miz laughed.

‘Retro suburb,’ Zefla breathed.

‘The latest of the …’ Cenuij scrolled the screen, then laughed. ‘Useless Kings,’ he said. ‘Well, how disarmingly honest.’

‘How far is this place from Malishu?’ Sharrow asked.

Cenuij checked. ‘About as far away as you can get. Nearest rail line is … ha! I don’t believe it; it says two days’ march away!’ He looked round the others. ‘This sounds like the place they invented the phrase “time-warp” to cover.’

Zefla nudged Sharrow with her hip. ‘Nice and far from the Huhsz.’

‘Hmm,’ Sharrow said, unconvinced. ‘Does it say what their religion is?’

Cenuij scrolled the text. ‘Basically home-grown; monarchworship and theophobia.’

‘Theophobia?’ Miz said.

‘They hate gods,’ Zefla said.

‘Fair enough,’ Miz said, nodding. ‘If I lived somewhere not even within hailing distance of the outskirts of the backend-of-nowhere, I’d want somebody in authority to blame, too.’

Miz booked tickets for them all, to Miykenns. A series of cross-routed phone calls ensured that a trusted exec in one of Miz’s holding companies in The Meg had his sister’s best friend book another ticket, in the name of Ysul Demri, for the water-world of Trontsephori.

Zefla shaved Sharrow’s hair off and spread a thin film of depilatory oil over her scalp. Miz sat on the bed behind them and pretended to cry. Sharrow inserted the contacts, used dabs of skinweld m alter the shape of her eyes, spray-bleached her eyebrows and inserted small plugs into her nostrils, lifting them and flaring them.

She looked at her ears in the dressing-table mirror. ‘My ears stick out,’ she said, frowning. She looked up at Zefla, standing behind her. ‘Do you think my ears stick out?’

Zefla shrugged. Miz shook his head. Sharrow decided her ears stuck out, and used skinweld on them too.