Going Under (17 page)

His normal healthy pale tan pallor had changed to a distinct grey and his eyes were nearly black. His hands were shaking slightly and his mouth was in a grim, white line where his lips were pressed together so hard they had gone bloodless. A line of green yellow aether snaked up to him like a long tongue and she saw his andalune body whip around it and tear it to bits in a blur that vanished almost as soon as it had begun.

They shared a long look at each other's eyes.

"I'm going back to Otopia now," she said. "I was just waiting for you to tell you."

He gave the merest nod. "I'll wait for Teazle."

There was a pause and silence between them. She wanted to bridge it but it was he who walked across to her and put his arms around her gently. Her anger vanished. She laid her head on his shoulder and hugged him close.

A waft of air pushed at both of them and she heard Teazle say from a couple of metres away, "No need."

She didn't move to let go of Zal and kept her eyes closed. The smell of him and the feel of his skin by her lips was too good to release for anything at that moment, even if nothing was right.

Teazle coughed with a racking, choking sound. His whole body convulsed. He retched and something heavy thudded onto the floor. Lila looked around and felt Zal's start of surprise.

Teazle, in dragonish demon form, stood like a reanimated zombie, so tired and wounded he could barely move, his body coated in streaks and splashes of vivid green. He leaked white fluid that dripped from his draggled feathers and once silky mane of hair. His back was twisted and wounds gaped open on his flanks. On the carpet in front of him, in a pool of slime, lay a large round object smothered in the bodies of coral snakes, one or two of which were still twitching. Lila had no trouble recognising it at once.

Teazle had just vomited up his mother's head.

He looked at Lila and then Zal, once each, and then collapsed to the floor and lay still, breathing shallow, eyes closed.

Finally Lila mustered enough energy to free herself from the grip of the shock. She said quietly, "Good dog."

It was what Sorcha would have said.

She turned back and was faced with the immediacy of Zal's odd face. The series of jolts she had been through made her see it as if it was new to her. The inhuman slant of his eyes, their large size, the unexpected cowboy square of his jaw, the way his brows were flatter than they really should be, making a dark broken dash line like a Morse M, the peculiarity of his long ears like antennae poking up through his tangled urchin's hair, the whole assembly made matte, powdered with dust from beyond the wall and marked with grime and sweat from their fight ... all this struck her as most freakishly unusual, a peculiar thing in a strange world. She kissed him fiercely, without caring if he wanted it.

He bent in her arms, soft and giving. His hands held her gently, touching her human back and shoulder, and his andalune body wrapped around her.

She struggled to get her body armour off. He tore at the Velcro holding it together and it came off like a pelt in one sudden go. She wore black evening gloves and black stockings and boots: her machine self. Like lace they made fine patterns of her ordinary skin where they migrated into her flesh.

He stood back and looked at it, then more closely. It was new to him. There used to be clean lines. There used to be clothes to pull off, and beneath the clothes limbs that did not make their own surfaces. Now her fake arms and legs glistered with the black gleam of chitin, though they were nothing of the sort. Naked, but not. His gaze on her was like hers had been on him.

She undid only what was necessary on his clothing and pushed him to his back on the floor. He offered no resistance until she went to take him in her mouth. Then he grabbed a fistful of her hair and hauled her mouth up to his. His kiss, both kisses, were sweet and tender as his hand stayed merciless and hard there. His other hand was on her hip but that one was kind and she was in charge. It was like a punishment that was secretly a gift.

She glanced up once and saw the Principessa Sikarza's face staring back at her. Its slime-smeared look was exultant. Behind it a long narrow slot of Teazle's eye gleamed at her, the pupil a widening blackness in the white.

She put Zal's hands on her breasts and sat back on him. She felt completely soft and human. His energy surrounded her with warmth. She looked over his head at Teazle and smiled at him where he lay unable to move, feeling herself a fire starting to catch. She wanted to burn until the day was ash.

Zal groaned, a deep sound of unlimited approval, and she was alight.

Later, when everything was quiet, she said, "What happened today?"

"Mistakes," Zal said.

But she didn't feel that was enough of an answer. She needed a better one. She went to fix up Teazle's wounds.

They returned to Otopia piecemeal, Lila first. It was night in Bay City as she came through the portal and rain was making the streets sparkle and steam. Soldiers with live guns escorted her past their cordons and then, after such fuss, left her unceremoniously on the street, glancing back at her now and then. One of them said something about her eyes and the other said, "Man, I can't wear lenses like that. So fucking cold."

She bought a mask from a street vendor and put it over her face. The rain had got the dust down, the girl said, but you couldn't be too careful. She bought a bike, as big and black and bad as the first one she'd owned, but sadly only ordinary beneath the slick faring-not like the first one she'd been given by the Agency, a bike so smart it was almost like part of her. Now she had to start the engine herself. The salesman frowned as the suspension sank under such a small-looking girl.

"I can get that looked at," he said.

"Nah." She paid without haggling, waited for them to fill the tank, and rode off without a helmet to the sounds of repeated protests. It was a very big bike. Her toes only just touched the ground.

She rode to the Agency building the long way, via Frisco-a detour of some hundred miles-and when she was done she knew that Malachi had been careful with what he said to her about the moths, because nothing was as she remembered it. It was quiet and still; the rain owned the streets and the buildings were all curtained shut. In the countryside she saw odd things moving around. Creatures flew overhead, singly and in pairs, huge and clumsy. Something followed her but she outran it, engine screaming. She stopped for a minute on a quiet lane between two farms and listened to the deep silence. The rain made muddy rivers of grey dust on her gas tank. When she got to where she was going she was ready.

At the Agency almost everyone she knew had gone home. Williams was asleep on the pullout bed in her office. Lila took one look at the old woman's hands, folded like a nun's underneath her cheek, and tiptoed out of the room. She crossed the open-plan administration area and let herself out of the door into the small and soaking garden lit with solar lights that led to Malachi's yurt.

As she straightened after ducking under the door flap the necklaces thumped against her collarbones. The black faery stood up as he saw her and rubbed his neck.

"A thousand things," he said, in response to her raised eyebrows enquiry. "Where should I start? Strandloper, moths, Zal, or Paxendale?"

"Paxendale?" she sat down at his gesture, on the pile of hides that made his daybed. It was low but she didn't mind it. He came around his desk and left his fancy chair behind to sit on some cushions, his back to the centre pole.

"A human scientist. Presently safely at home in the land of nod, to wake tomorrow and return with his claims about the Bomb. Drink?"

"Yes."

He went to his little refrigerator and took out two bottles of Faery Lite, opening both before handing one to her and returning to his position. She felt the bottle vibrate in her hand as its charm adapted the contents and then tasted something light, herbal, refreshing, and alcoholic-just what she had wanted, if she'd known such a drink existed. On the bottle's label the pretty green tiny tot faery that was the logo smiled and winked at her.

"As you know darling," Malachi said, leaning his head back against the post, "we here at the Agency take the Bomb very seriously."

"We do?"

"Care about it immensely. At least, we should, to hear him talk. I had gathered the humans were less interested in it as a mystery now and more interested in moving forwards, in spite of the anachronisms."

"But this guy hasn't lost interest."

"No. In fact, it's his speciality."

"Crazy?"

"If so, then an employed one with the Ministry of Extraordinary Investigations, under whose banner ..."

"... we all shelter ..."

"Yes, yes. Anyway, he came to explain his latest theory about the Incident. It's extremely complicated and involves quite a lot of physics ... I fell asleep in that part ... but the upshot is that he believes that all of the visible cracking in the worlds is a result of the Bomb Event."

"Not new."

"Ah no, but there's more. The Bomb is supposed to have taken your original human universe and split it into seven pieces that are not divided in space and time but along another axis he calls the rei. As in Thing. Reification, to make into a thing. That's the word isn't it? And that's scientists for you. Anyway, he thinks that the rei is a kind of space-time of its own sitting at right angles to Otopia ... which is not the same as old Earth. Old Earth time and whatsit is like a rope and now after the Bomb it's all like a frayed rope, if you see."

"Kind of. Go on."

"Well, space-time has ... space ... time ... and matter ... and the rei has void and aether ... no, that's not it. Something like that. His main point was that he thinks this was all created when the Bomb Event caused a direct interaction between matter and consciousness. It all boils down to us being figments of your imagination again. He even went so far as to say that the seven worlds related to the seven chakras of the spiritual body but then he had to stop and wake me up."

"Why should we care?"

"Because there is a growing body of opinion in your ranks that think a reversal of the Bomb Event is just the thing to stop the problem of destabilisation. Paxendale doesn't think so, but he's more or less alone and forces are moving now that people can actually see a faultline crossing their own backyard."

"Is it possible?"

"I sincerely doubt it, since the worlds were not created by the Bomb. But that is not what the humans believe. Most of the other regions however, at least the ones with brains in them, are much more ready to agree that the Bomb is the cause of the cracking and are considering ways of doing a similar thing-namely, removing Otopia from its position. There was stability you see, for a long time, and very little traffic. Which brings me to Zal. A very detailed analysis of his music reveals patterns that stimulate human brain activity-beyond normal reaction."

"Do what?" she almost choked.

"The Agency believes he is seeking to influence people. The only thing they aren't sure about is what he's influencing them to do. There hasn't been a big social shift of any kind. I looked into it while you were away. Had an aetheric decoder run through his stuff. The songs are charmed. It's a very mild effect, being here, but they definitely have an effect greater than ordinary music."

"Which is?"

"I couldn't tell but I am certain that it can only be a matter of time before the Agency figures it out and then he's either going to be deported or ..."

"Or?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they made you some ultimatum."

"Oh," she sat for a moment and digested that one.

"Yes. It would serve a double purpose of testing your loyalty, which is only intact because Williams covered up for you when you ran down to yank out wires in the basement. But you're on borrowed time. Not least because there's really no disguising the sheer terror that you presently instill in Ops Medical. One false step and there are people above her who won't hesitate to pull your plug. Mine too, needless to say. And on that note ..." He reached into the pocket of his immaculate, carelessly worn but fiendishly well-tailored jacket and produced a small memory chip which he passed across to her. "Don't ask where I got it."

She pressed it gently between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and felt a tingling and stinging as the pseudo-flesh transformed itself into ports and processors capable of reading the information there and flashing it up to her Al. Writing, figures, photographs, blueprints sprang into sudden light before her eyes and pushed Mal and his comfortable little yurt far into the background.

It would have taken her a week to read it if she had had to pore over the documents herself but her Al, long used to composing material for her, extracted the significant information and drew just that to her attention. It did so with what she could only describe as eagerness. A strange thing to find in a machine. She didn't hesitate to ignore that and instead focused on the news.

A year after the Bomb, the Agency had been anonymously sent a series of coded files through the World Tree, which is what the oldstyle Internet had evolved into. After months of failing to crack the code, an operative, who had been lost for some time in the first missions to the new worlds, reappeared. She said she had been given a code by an unidentified being which had taken the form of a man. At first she had thought him part of an Agency extraction squad sent to rescue her party from the Dizzy Gulf-an area of Faery that bled directly into the Void.