Against A Dark Background (24 page)

Dloan sat on the bed beside Miz with Sharrow’s satchel turned inside out on his lap. He unpicked the stitching, then reached in and withdrew her new identity papers, handing them to her. She looked at her holo in her ID while Zefla carefully removed the depilatory film.

‘”Ysul Demri”, eh?’ Zefla said, glancing at the name on Sharrow’s new ID as she crumpled the stubble-studded film and threw it into a bin. She squinted at the holo. ‘Totally convincing. Always fancied being a bald, did you?’ She started to spread hair-preventing cream over Sharrow’s scalp.

Sharrow nodded. ‘They’re supposed to have more fun.’

Zefla’s hands glided over her soft skin, gently rubbing the cream in. Miz made sensuous grunting noises in the background.

‘Geis?’

‘Sharrow. I hope you don’t mind me calling you . . . can’t we get vision on this?’

‘No; I’m dressing at the moment.’

‘I beg your pardon. Shall I call back?’

‘No, it’s all right. It’s . . . good to hear from you, Geis, but do you mind me asking how you found me?’

‘Not at all. I’ve had my comm people scanning all the public data bases for your name; I thought I might be able to warn you if it looked like the Huhsz were closing in. I hope you don’t mind . . .’

‘I suppose not. My life seems to be pretty public-domain these days.’

‘I don’t want to alarm you; we’re pretty certain the Huhsz haven’t got access to this sort of hacking power. But there’s a report on the local contract police data base that there was some sort of incident at a party at this guy’s house last night. Didn’t he work for the family, once?’

‘That was his father. But, yes, there was an incident.’

‘The police aren’t holding you, are they?’

‘No. It’s been cleared up. I’ll be on my way soon.’

‘I see. Anyway, Sharrow, I was calling for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of confused reports coming out of the Log-Jam at the moment, I won’t ask you about that . . . but I did hear about what happened to that monorail in the K’lel, and my satellite people tell me there’s a lot of Huhsz activity around an old nuclear-waste silo on the edge of the desert. I just wanted to say … Well, I’d better not say too much, even over this channel, though it is pretty secure… But I did want to say; congratulations. It took one of my best AIs seconds to come up with the same scheme, even after it was pointed in the right direction. It was brilliant.’

‘Thanks. It was Miz’s idea, actually.’

‘Oh. Still, it was good. But of course it won’t delay them for very long. I understand the holes in the Passports might continue to radiate for quite a while, but the Huhsz have placed orders for portable magnetic inclusion chambers with Continental Fusion Inc. and, well, it’ll make things difficult for them, I suppose, having to cart gear that size around with them, but I just wanted to say that my offer stands; I’ll do all I can - everything I can to protect you, if you’ll just give me the chance.’

And I still appreciate n, Geis, but I’ll try and dodge them for a while longer.’

‘I think you’re very brave. Please remember; if you need any help at all, I am yours to command.’

‘The last person who said that . . .’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing. Yes, thanks. I’ll remember.’

She left the viewing-gallery, and in the double doors between the auditorium and the main corridor bumped into a man just on his way in. She started to apologise, then saw his bright smile, his bald head. He looked at her bald scalp and smiled even more broadly as the doors behind her opened and somebody else entered the narrow space between the two sets of doors and put what felt like a gun to the nape of her neck.

‘Oh, Lady Sharrow,’ the first young man said, sounding perfectly delighted and still gazing at her bald head. ‘You didn’t need to go to all that trouble just for us!’

They travelled separately to Ikueshleng, the space port for Golter’s eastern hemisphere. The others had already gone when she got there. She paid cash for a stand-by to Stager. She watched some screen while she waited, feeling nervous but trying not to look it. Golter had had some bad experiences with crashing spacecraft over the millennia, and as a result one of the few things that was strictly controlled about the planet was space traffic; the vast majority of commercial ships were restricted to two ports serving a hemisphere each, and both the resulting bottlenecks, though Free Ports and so not closely bureaucratically controlled, were inevitably dangerous places for people on the run.

She survived unchallenged and caught a shuttle around noon; half an hour later she was in Stager, the kilometre-diameter, five-wheel spacestation that was the traveller’s usual next port of call after Ikueshleng.

She found a midsystem discount ticket shop in wheel five and bought a high bounce-factor single to Phrastesis Habitats via Miykenns/Malishu-station. She watched the clerk put her credit card into the reader, and tried not to look relieved when the transaction went through. She had to sign an insurance disclaimer, and scribbled something that might just have passed for Ysul Demri if you’d had a good imagination. She bought a disposable phone with a hundred thrials of credit embedded, a basic-model wrist-screen and a newssheet, ate a light lunch in a small, over-priced cafe, then she walked round the curve of the wheel’s outer rim to the viewing-gallery.

She sat between them, in the very back row of the gallery. She stared at the screen. The one on her right did the talking.

‘Three baldies in a row!’ he sniggered. ‘What a laugh, eh?’

The one on her left sat watching the screen with a jacket over his lap. He held the gun underneath the jacket, pointed into her side just below her ribs. Guns tended not to be terribly popular baggage items with the people who ran space-stations - she had reluctantly abandoned her HandCannon to a left-luggage agency in Ikueshleng - and she was almost tempted to believe the gun poking into her ribs was a fake, but she thought the better of doing anything that would ensure she’d find out.

She looked at the profile of the silent man holding the gun. He was identical to the one on her right. She could see no sign that either of them was an android.

‘I said, what a laugh, eh?’ The one on her right poked her with one finger. Her right hand flicked out, grabbed his hand; she glared into his eyes. His mouth made an O. He looked amused. The gun under her left ribs prodded briefly.

She let go of his hand. It had been warm; it had felt like a human hand.

‘My, we’re touchy,’ the young man on her right said. ‘I almost wish we’d brought one of our mannequins along.’ He pulled at the collar of his tight grey, business-like jacket, adjusting his cuffs. ‘I take it you had your little flashback two days ago, did you?’

She watched the planet for a moment, looking down on what must be noon on Issier (there; white fluffs of cloud in the centre of Phirar, covering the archipelago) and nodded slowly.

‘I believe I felt something, at one point,’ she said.

‘Just to let you know we haven’t forgotten you,’ the young man said. ‘I hear you were seeing an old friend of the family; terrible shame about old Bencil Dornay. What a shock that must have been for you.’

She sought southern Caltasp under its own speckled cover of cloud, and identified the huge smooth curve of Farvel Bight, its northern limit hidden under the clouds that reputedly never broke above the Sea House.

‘Our family likes its old servants to know we haven’t forgotten them,’ she told the young man. ‘Or their children.’

‘Indeed.’ The young man said. ‘So now you’re on your way to Miykenns, aren’t you, Lady Sharrow . . .?’ He paused. ‘Except you missed the ship you were booked on, and which the rest of your team took.’

She looked up, tracing again the route she’d taken to the Franck’s home, then on to Lip City.

`Did I?’ she said. ‘Damn. I hate it when that happens.’

‘And instead you’re off to Trontsephori, isn’t that right?’

She looked down the long coast of Piphram, straining to make out the lagoons and the dot that was the Log-Jam.

‘Am I?’ she said.

‘No, Ysul,’ the young man said almost gently. ‘No, you’re not.’ He sighed. ‘You’re Phrastesis bound, according to your ticket. But somehow I don’t think you’ll make it all the way there.’

She looked from the burning bright heart of Jonolrey’s Mel desert into his eyes.

‘You’re very well informed for a messenger boy,’ she said. ‘You should be in the travel business.’

He smiled coldly at her. ‘Don’t be unpleasant, Lady Sharrow,’ he said. He put out his hand and stroked her upper arm with one finger. ‘We can be so much more unpleasant to you than you can be to us.’

She looked down at the slowly stroking finger, then back to his eyes. He watched his finger too, as though it didn’t belong to him. ‘Not even,’ he said quietly, ‘that greasy little over-achiever of a cousin of yours will be able to help you, if we decide to be really unpleasant to you . . . Lady Sharrow.’

She reached out to take hold of his stroking finger, but he took it away, folding his arms.

‘You know, she said. ‘I’m really getting a little fed up with you and all your attentions.’ She frowned at him. ‘Just who are you? Why are you doing this? What sort of weird enjoyment do you get from it? Or do you just do whatever you’re told?’

He smiled tolerantly. ‘Let me give you a word of advice-’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let me give you a word of advice.’ She leant towards him, away from the gun. ‘Stop doing this, or I’ll hurt you - if you can be hurt - or I’ll kill you; kill or destroy both of you-’

The young man was pretending to look frightened; he was pulling faces at his twin sitting on her other side. The gun was stuck harder under her ribs. She ignored the gun and reached out with her left hand and took the other young man’s chin in her hand.

‘No, listen to me,’ she said, gripping his chin hard, feeling the warm smoothness of it, and forcing one finger into the side of his neck, to touch the beat of blood beneath his skin. He smelled of cheap scent. He looked at her and tried to smirk, but the way she was holding his chin made it difficult. The gun was a sharp pain under her ribs, but she couldn’t really care just at that point. She shook his chin a little.

‘I’ll do whatever I can to both of you,’ she said. ‘And I don’t give a flying fuck what you or your employers do to me; I’ve never liked being treated the way you miserable little pricks have been treating me, and I don’t respond well to that sort of persuasion, understand? You getting all this?’

She made a play of searching his eyes. ‘Are you? Whoever I’m talking to in there? Comprehend? You’ve made your point and you’ll get your Gun. Now just fuck off; or we’ll all suffer.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘Yes, I’ll suffer most, I don’t doubt.’ The bleak smile faded. ‘But at least I won’t be alone.’

She let go of his chin slowly, pushing his head away a little with her last touch.

The young man smoothed a hand over his scalp and readjusted his jacket collar. He cleared his throat, glancing at his image on her other side. ‘Your talent for destruction extends to yourself I see, Lady Sharrow,’ he said. ‘How democratic in one so noble.’

She got up slowly, holding her satchel. ‘Eat my shit, you puppet,’ she told him. She paused as she moved past the one with the gun, looking into his eyes and then glancing at his lap. ‘I trust the rest of your weaponry is rather more intimidating.’

She walked, trying not to limp, along the aisle towards the gangway, the back of her naked scalp and the area between her shoulder blades itching and tingling, waiting for the shot that would kill her, or just the start of the pain again, but she made it to the end of the aisle, then down the steps, then through the double doors without anything happening.

In the corridor outside she collapsed back against the wall, swallowing, breathing heavily and putting her head back against the soft bulkhead. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Then she made her eyes go as wide as they could, blew her cheeks out, and with a slight shake of her head, walked away.

She landed on Miykenns three days later. The shuttle bellied down onto the wide, calm waters of Lake Malishu, its still hot hull creating bursts of steam with each skimming kiss so that its progress was marked by a series of small, distinct clouds, each curling round itself like a gauzy leaf and rising into the warm, still air while the craft whizzed on, finally settling onto the lake’s mirror-surface in a long, unzipping trail of white.

Beyond the early-morning coastal mists, the Entraxrln towered distantly on all sides, as though the lake existed in the eye of some vast purple storm.

She stepped lightly onto the jetty on Embarkation Island. Miykenns’ gravity was barely seventy per cent of Golter’s; the ship she’d journeyed on had maintained one Golter-g during acceleration and deceleration, and so Miykenns gave her the delicious feeling that she was about to float away all the time; it was a sensation that had led to more than a few broken limbs and heads over the time that people from Golter had been landing on Miykenns and suddenly feeling as though they could leap tall buildings.

She looked around and breathed deeply. The heady, fruity air filled her instantly with a careless, dizzy optimism, and an aching nostalgia that was sweet and poignant at once.

She and her fellow passengers were presented with flowers by tall, smiling Tourist Agency youngsters and shown the way to the maglev terminal; Malishu’s usual informality manifested itself in a total lack of any visible officials between the shuttle jetty and the maglev platform, and its renowned organisational prowess was demonstrated in the fact that an empty train had departed just before the passengers got there.

People stood on the open platform watching the winking light at the rear of the train as it disappeared down the causeway heading across the misty lake for the city.

Then groans turned to cheers as it became obvious the slowly flashing light had stopped and was coming nearer. Applause greeted the returning train.

She sat in the nose of the observation car, a huge smile on her face as she watched the great towers and sheet-membranes of the Entraxrln draw nearer while flocks of birds drifted across the lake on either side like huge clouds of lazy snowflakes under the clearing morning mists.