Against A Dark Background (68 page)

Then she saw Froterin and Cara and Vleit standing behind the others, and they looked great and hadn’t aged at all, and she laughed and cried and hugged them too, and they were all talking at once and everybody was hugging everybody else, all so glad to see one another after all this time, but soon it was time for them all to go, and her eyes filled with so many tears she couldn’t see properly as they all boarded the train, waving and smiling sadly as the old engine went huff, huff, and gradually pulled the dark carriages away from the little station in the snow.

She and the Gun watched the train disappear into the white distance. Then she looked at the Gun and It smiled.

The sleeping woman stirred beneath the android, sighing and turning over in her sleep. Feril pushed the speed up as they flashed past a town, burning in the darkness. More lights flared in the sky to the south, and the broad band of junklight sparkled intermittently.

The monowheel forded two rivers and swam three.

Lady Sharrow woke with the dawn.

The sky was a shroud of low cloud; light drizzle fell. They zipped along the tide-wet shore, leaving their single cryptic track behind on the winter beach. The sky ahead looked dark, solid and certain after the hollow blueness and the overcast’s grey indeterminacy.

The beach went on into the distance, and she let the speed climb until the monowheel would go no faster. The cockpit closed right over and the noise was still colossal. The streaked sand and water flashed at them and beneath them to be pressed and flung, arcing and falling into the whirling vortex the vehicle left behind as it screamed along the shore, its whole body humming, vibrating like a tensed, quivering animal, their speed so great that its suspension was finally registering bumps and small shocks. She smiled. The dunes to her right were a blur. The velocity read-out indicated that they were travelling at about seventy per cent of the speed of sound.

Feril was hunched over the rear of the liquid glass. She risked a glance. The android’s expressionless face gave no hint of its emotions.

The beach became uncomfortably bumpy and changed to a mixture of sand and gravel; drizzle sounded on the screen like blasted shot. She relaxed and slowed the car until the cockpit glass opened a hole above her head. The roaring noise was still terrific.

`You okay?’ she shouted.

Extremely!’ Feril said loudly, and sounded as though it meant it.
What an exhilarating experience!’

She drove on; three hundred kilometres an hour suddenly seemed terribly slow. Surf boomed to their left as the drizzle became rain and the cloud overhead thickened. She took the monowheel into the dunes in the cloud-dark noon.

On the far side of a stinking marsh guarded by ancient, crumbling concrete monoliths and a series of weed-scummed lagoons, they came to the fence. It looked dilapidated but still strong. There was a guard tower nearby but it was unoccupied and strung with blowweed.

The cold wind moaned through the hexagons in the fence and the metal support legs of the tower.

They got out of the vehicle. Feril could detect no surveillance devices. She considered using the cannon just for speed, but it would be noisy; she cut the fence’s steel mesh strand by strand with the laser instead. The monowheel curtsied through the hole and they rolled on through the chill levels of marshland beyond.

She brought the vehicle splashing out of a greasy, polluted stream and charged it up the wet-dark sand to the bottom of a dip between two tall dunes.

The Sea House lay in the rain-dulled distance, its dark bulk shrouded in squalls and cloud. Its top hundred metres were hidden, the spires and towers vanishing into the murk like the giant trunks of a petrified forest.

The cold wind gusted; a stench of rotting seaweed flowed around the stationary vehicle like a slimy, stroking hand.

`Ah-ha,’ said Feril.

`Yes,’ she said, tilting the wheel towards the slope of gravel beach beneath and squeezing the throttle. ‘Ah-fucking-ha.’

The monowheel skimmed easily across the weed and pools in the bay, climbed the greasy stones of the causeway’s steep sides without a pause and came to rest near the middle of the isthmus, facing the Sea House and standing absurdly on its single disc like a resting bird. She climbed out; Feril remained in the vehicle.

She walked, limping, to the great iron door overhanging the incline at the end of the causeway. Her hands were empty; they shook. Her belly grumbled and she felt faint. The blood pumped and coursed within her, and with each beat of her heart the whole vast edifice seemed to quake and pulse and shiver, as though for all its mountainous solidity the Sea House was merely a projection, something held in the power of her blood-quickened eyes.

There was no sign that anybody had noticed her approach. Clouds bundled round the House’s crenellated slopes, snagged there and were dragged away again. The rain was cold on her face. She reached the tilted gatehouse and found a heavy stone. She slammed the rock against the great iron door repeatedly. Chips of stone and rust fell together to the damp cobbles. Her muscles ached; the bones in her arms seemed to resonate with each quivering concussion.

`All right! All right!’ a voice said. She dropped the rock and stooped to the opened grille.

`What do you want?’ the voice said from the darkness.

‘In,’ she said.

`What?’

`Let me in,’ she said.

`Who are you? What’s your name? Have you made an appointment?’

‘No. Let me in. Please let me in. It’s very important.’

`What? No appointment? This is disgraceful. Certainly not, go away. And if that’s your car, you can’t park there.’

`Stand away from the door,’ she said, stepping slowly backwards.

`What?’ said the small, scratchy voice.

Stand well away from the door if you want to live,’ she called, still walking backwards.
Stand back!’

She turned and ran, waved to the android in the monowheel, then dived to the causeway’s flagstones, her arms over her head.

The monowheel’s cannon boomed eight times in quick succession; immediately following the first blast there began an answering sequence of eight thunderous explosions. After the last, she got up and ran to the monowheel, which was already moving towards her. Feril put out a hand and hauled her easily into the cockpit.

She took the controls as Feril leant back, sending the monowheel curving down the causeway while debris was still falling from the wrecked gatehouse. As the monowheel splashed into the shallow pools among the weed at the bottom of the causeway, the Sea House’s great iron door fell forward in one vast, dusty, smoking piece and slammed into the slope, cracking the causeway and throwing flagstones and cobbles into the air. The rest of the gatehouse’s facade crumbled and slid, collapsing into a smoking pile around the fallen door and leaving a huge broil of dust above a ramp of rubble and a dark, gaping breach.

The monowheel sped away, charging round -the curve of the bay in front of the Sea House’s curtain wall and into the slack retreating waters of the old tide, wading to a point in the towering walls a third of the way round the structure from the wrecked gatehouse.

`There,’ Feril said.

She turned the vehicle towards the scooped trench of a weed-draped tunnel in the towering granite walls.

The monowheel crept up the stinking sewage outfall to a portcullis of corroded iron bars. A torrent of dirty water fell from a level halfway up the two-metre diameter grille. She picked up the laser.

It looks very rusty,’ Feril said.
Try nudging it.’

She sent the monowheel forward; the iron frame creaked then shifted. She reversed the monowheel quickly. The portcullis fell forward, splashing into the tunnel and releasing the dammed-up pond of sewage behind. She heard it flowing past them, and almost passed out with the smell.

They travelled another twenty metres up the sewer before reaching a junction beyond which the pipes became too narrow for the monowheel. They looked up; grey light filtered down through a grating. Feril stood on the top of the vehicle and pushed the grating up and back.

The android climbed out; she passed it the Lazy Gun, then Feril pulled her up to join it. She strapped the Gun to herself while Feril replaced the grating. She handed Feril the laser rifle anal kept the pistol for herself.

They were in a broad, damp gallery; tall windows on one side contained not a single intact pane. Rain gusted in. Moss grew on dulled mosaics underfoot as the woman and the android jogged along to the darkness of a doorway. They turned a corner and ran right into a small monk walking towards them, one iron-manacled hand chained to the wall at his side, his gaze fixed on the steaming bowl he was carrying.

Sharrow bumped into the monk, splashing the gruel over his habit and the wall at his side. He looked angry for a moment, then his mouth fell open as he saw the android. His brows furrowed as he looked at their chainless hands. He had time to look frightened, briefly, before Sharrow cracked his head off the stones above his chain track; he slid unconscious down the wall.

Feril looked back at the prone figure as they ran on.

They climbed what seemed a never-ending spiral of steps rising out of a vast gallery, exiting at the top of a massive stone tower and crossing to the main House over a thin stone bridge, high over an ancient deserted dock where dilapidated cranes stood pierced with rust and coated with moss. Thigh-thick lengths of rope lay coiled on the rotting dock-sides like enormous worm-casts.

They followed the chain system through draughty corridors and dark halls, turning each time the number of rails decreased. They had to hide twice as monks passed them in gloomy corridors. The second group carried rifles and were running in the direction of the distant gatehouse.

The chain system’s inset hierarchy took them constantly upwards and inwards, ascending broad, shadowy flights of steps, ramps that spiralled and zigged and zagged higher and higher into the middle then upper levels of the House. Halls and balconies, tunnels and corridors filled the stone-space; their feet sounded off paving-slabs, wooden planks, ceramic tiles and pierced metal. The tracks on the walls were reduced to two, then one as they penetrated the vast building.

Finally they found a corridor whose walls were quite smooth, with no rails whatsoever. They walked cautiously into a small, walled courtyard ceilinged with chill grey mist where bedraggled plants lay beaded and heavy with moisture. What appeared to be a well in the centre of the courtyard looked down into a vast hall where they saw tiny figures moving to and fro. A rancid draught of air rose from the well, bringing the noise of small, alarmed voices.

They looked round the windows facing onto the hidden garden. Feril nodded at a door in one corner.

It wasn’t locked. They walked into a short corridor lined with pornographic holos. Feril stopped outside a door. She could hear voices now, too.

They burst in. The girl in the bed gave a shriek and ducked under the bedclothes. The fat, naked man sitting at the screen whirled round, his eyes wide. A senior brother’s habit lay folded on a chair. She lasered the screen; it had been on sound only. The naked man put his arms up, sheltering himself from the debris of the exploded screen.

`You have five minutes,’ she told him,
to take us straight to any “Honoured Guests” who’ve arrived here in the last three days.’ She looked at Feril.
Start counting.’

The fat man sat up, trying to muster his dignity. He took a breath.

And you had better fucking know who I mean,’ she told him, before he could speak,
or you’re cooked meat.’

Daughter,’ the man said, standing, his voice confident and controlled. He pointed to the habit on the chair.
At least allow-’

Oh, at least nothing,’ she said, suddenly angry. She fired the gun at the floor between his feet. Splinters burst from the varnished wood. There was a yelp from beneath the bedclothes and the fat man hopped on one foot, holding the other. His eyes had gone wide again.
Move!’ Sharrow yelled.

They walked through the apartments; the fat brother limped, leaving a trail of blood. She limped after him, frowning at the red spots they were leaving in a trail behind them. She kept looking back. They climbed steps, crossed a terrace underneath a roof of stained glass, and then the fat man pointed a shaking hand at a door.

She stationed him two metres back from the door, a finger to her lips. `Keep him there,’ she told Feril quietly. The android stood behind the naked matt, gripping his quivering shoulders. She went to the wall at the side of the door and tested the handle. It turned and she pushed; the door swung open.

`No!’ the fat man screamed, an instant before his torso exploded open through a giant red crater in his midriff. Blood gushed from his mouth as his eyes rolled back and his entrails flooded out. She ducked and rolled across the bottom of the door, firing.

Feril let go of the man and stepped to the side.

Sharrow jumped up and stuck her head round the side of the door; Molgarin lay on the floor inside, screaming.

`You?’ she said, frowning.

Molgarin was propped up on his elbows, howling. He was dressed in a dull habit; the HandCannon lay where he had dropped it. The laser had burned deep into one shin and shattered the other; blood pumped onto a dark carpet.

He saw her.
Don’t kill me!’ he screamed.
Don’t kill me! I’m not immortal! I’m an actor, not some warlord! My name’s Lefin Chrolleser! I worked in a rep company on Trond I swear! For pity’s sake, please! He made me do it! He made me! I’ll take you to him! Please don’t kill me!’ He put his head back, sobbing and spluttering.
God, my legs! My legs!’ He looked back at her, eyes streaming, and wailed,
Oh, please don’t kill me, please . . . I promise I’ll take you to him . . .’

Sharrow looked at Feril. `Could you carry him?’ she asked.

The android nodded. `I think so.’

She burned the man’s leg wound with the laser to stop the blood. His screams echoed through the stained-glass rooms.