Keeping It Real (2 page)

swing of her ruby and scarlet
hair. There was nothing to show that
she was barely half a human being any

longer
.
She enjoyed the feeling, until the receptionist popped her bubblegum and said, 'Jelly'U see you

now.'

Lila walked into the office. It hadn't changed since the
Rolling S
t
one
shoot, except that there were two

more platinum discs hanging over his desk, both printed with The No Shows logo: a heart inside a red

circle with a diagonal slash across it. She stood in front of the desk and looked at
Jelly as he looked at

her. He was a thin, leathery whipcord of a man, brimming with nervous energy, and could barely sit still a

moment.

'Doublesafe said you were the best,' he said and shrugged, not very impressed
.
'I got to tell you, I

don't know. We're getting some trouble. Letters. Threats. We have a tour to do. You look like kinda

lightweight, like a kid could push you away in a crowd, or maybe even a big wind. What you got to say?'

He took off his dark glasses and folded his hands under his chin. He had a gold ring on every finger.

Lila shrugged back, also not impressed. 'If we get into a crowd then I didn't do my job. We won't be

in any crowds.' She was recording the entire conversation, sending it to her Incon boss on a secure,

wireless feed the entire time, using the camera system inside her eyes.

'Well, you don't
look too bad,' he said. 'And I know shit about it all, only that I need Zal to survive the

tour and make some more tracks. You cool with elves?'

'I'm cool,' Lila said. The lie rolled easily off her tongue. She felt her heart rate go up and she would

have begun sweating, but her auto-systems kicked in and masked all of her nerves with effective machine

frost. Drugs and hormones from adapted glands in her neck and brain smoothed her until it was true. She

was cool.

'Good. You're hired. You can start now. Go pick him up and take him down to the studios. He . . .'

T have all the details,' LiLa said in her most professional tone, tapping the back of her hand where an

ordinary person kept
their Organiser
.
'Your office sent me everything already.'

'Oh yeah?' For the first
time Jelly seemed fazed. Then he grinned, T like having the mostest
people

working for me.' Then, 'Why you still here?'

Lila walked out. On her way to the car park she connected briefly with her boss, Cara Delaware, to

tell her that
the job was successful and

to hear Cara say, 'Great. You okay? Your reflexes showed some peak stress levels there. We can pull

you if it gets too much.'

'No,' Lila said quickly. She'd reached her bike. Its sleek, powerful lines and instant
reaction to her

touch on the grips had already calmed her more completely than her Al-self's drug response to her

nervous-ness
.
The doses themselves had been so low that
their effect
was already gone and here, where

inappropriate reactions didn't
matter, the AI didn't bother masking her true responses. The engine purred

like a giant cat, making the concrete vibrate under her feet. 'I'm fine.'

"Then you're activated,' Cara said. 'Partial cover. Your support
team are online when you need them.

You're operating out
of central offices now. Everything goes through the team. Nobody else. Not even

me.'

'Thanks. Take care of everyone for me.' Lila thought of her dog, Okie, whom she'd had to leave at

home to be looked after by her colleagues until she returned. She thought of her family, although they'd

been left behind years ago when she stopped being plain diplomatic attache Lila Amanda Black and

became something quite different. There was no telling when she might be back from this job, but
she

had agreed to one thing for certain when she agreed to live as a cyborg of the AI division instead of die

of her wounds and now, no matter when the cover ended, she was never going home again.

'Good luck, Lila.' The line cut
dead. It
was the first time since she had been Mended that
she was

really and truly on her own. Where Cara and the NSA office had been a constant, monitoring presence

fresh zones of silence opened in Lila's head. She smiled and the bike traced an arc of beautiful speed into

the traffic heading downtown.

The bike didn't
talk. There were versions that
did but
Lila didn't
want
more machines in her head than were already there. Besides, she had every A-Z of Otopia available to her from the memory chips in her

skull. The address that the studio gave her for Zal's rental home was high in the Lightwater Hills in the

most exclusive area of Bay City. She rode without
a helmet, her red curls rippling in the wind as she lay

low across the gas tank and sped through the streets
.

Her route took her around the Bay itself, where whitecap waves were dashing in ones and twos

across the water, over the vast towerless span of the elf-built bridge - the Andalune - and through the

dense woodlands which crept from the water's edge to the Heights of Solomon. Zal's house lay over the

ridge, the only clue to its presence a heavily barred iron gate set in stone posts that
were almost hidden

by trees. There was no postbox and no speakerphone. Lila pulled up in front and glanced up at the

spikes. Behind the gates the forest
thick-ened and the boughs of the trees leant
over the road and

shrouded it in darkness
.
Within twenty metres the drive curved away from her and was lost to sight. In

the quiet she heard her engine and the sough of wind in the leaves. She was surrounded by trees.

Using the private contact numbers and her Al-self's communication suite - nested inside her head

where everyone else had to use a Pod or a Berry or a Seed to interface - she called to the security

people from Doublesafe who were already inside
.
The gates swung inward silently and Lila moved

forward in a steady glide
.

The road snaked its way steadily uphill and then into a hollow which lay at
the summit of the hill
.

Solomon's Folly stood there - a giant white stone house facing south. It
looked through a cut
swathe in

the forest
like a firebreak which ran over simple grassland down and down

and down to a crescent
of white beach and the sea
.
It
was three storeys high for the most
part, and

roughly covered an area the size of two football pitches. Pieces of it
had towers and other pieces had

glass roofs. It
had many sides and angles. Some of them were lost among trees, others seemed to teeter

on or be built
inside large boulders which piled along the north face of the house. It
looked like it
had

been built one room at a time, almost randomly, without thought for anything except
a sea view and an

obsessive need for privacy, and so it
had been. Lila felt
almost
il looking at it. It was hideous. It looked

as though the hollow had been created by the house's incomprehensible weight, and that everything was

sinking into the earth.

She paused before the last descent to gawp and catch her breath. Pine needles and heavy loam and

other green and rotting smells were thick in the air because the day was hot and making them rise. To her

left and right she looked into the woods on maximum zoom and saw signs of a great number of wood

elementals but nothing of the elusive beings themselves. You would expect elementals around elves, and

in forests of any size, but you would never expect an elf to live in a house like this. It was a rental

property. There could be no other explanation. Lila recorded what she saw and went on down to the

main door. It stood open and as she dismounted a man in a Doublesafe uniform came to escort her

inside.

A woman wearing a gloriously expensive dress, very understated, and antique Jimmy Choo shoes

came to greet her. 'I'm Jolene, Zal's PA' she said and Lila shook hands with her. Jolene was the kind of

human Lila associated with elf groupiedom; smart, in control, stylish. It
was difficult
not
to feel inferior,

especially without
a slick manicure
.
Lila put
her hands behind her back and reminded herself she wasn't

here to look great, only to carry out her job. Jolene seemed content with her authentication documents

and barely raised an eyebrow at either Lila's gender or her size, so perhaps she wasn't all bad.

'Would you like to see the house first?' Jolene offered, glancing at her watch.

'No thanks,' Lila said. 'I know the layout.'

'And the staff and the grounds and what
they eat for breakfast, I suppose,' Jolene said, smiling. 'In that

case I understand it's time you were at work. Is that bike the only vehicle you brought?' She peered

anxiously across the vast hallway and through the door at Lila's Kawasaki.

'Elves won't
travel in Faraday cages,' Lila said, 'so that rules out
cars, trains and planes. I don't travel

on horseback, and it beats walking.'

'So, you have done some homework,' Jolene nodded, satisfied. 'I'll go and get him.'

'It's okay, I'll go,' Lila said, stepping around her. As Jolene looked puzzled she added, 'Our offices sent

you a ring, which you gave him to wear. It's connected to our private network through secure branches

not connected to the Otopia Tree. I could find him in the middle of a Bears game at Alton Park. Not that

he'd be caught
dead there.' She hesitated but
Jolene didn't
smile at
this efficient sidestepping of Otopia's

global internet. Instead the woman's nervousness returned.

'I really wish this wasn't
necessary Ms Black,' she said, 'I hope you don't
take these threats as lightly

as you speak of them.'

'I don't,' Lila said. She regretted her tone as she walked away. Showing some small weakness in front

of Jolene would have gained her more sympathy. Now the woman was faintly antagonised by her.

The hall gave way to several corridors and stairways
.
Lila went up to the second floor and through a

maze of meandering ways to where a room the size of her entire apartment looked out through a glass

wall to the ocean, giving a superb view
.
She couldn't see anybody in it, only a set of pale sofas, a

seemingly random assortment of plants in pots, and a coat laid over a straight-backed chair. Very faintly

from somewhere she could hear Stevie Wonder singing 'Blame It
On The Sun'. Otherwise the house was

silent.

She walked to where her augmented and automated senses told her Zal was. The Doublesafe ring was

on the chair, beside the coat. Lila glanced at it with annoyance, verging on anger, but curbed the feeling

quickly and concentrated instead on the beauty of the coat. It
was elvish-made, of tightly woven raw silk,

sparely decorated with magical sigils that
were so old they no longer bore any scent or colour of their

own. The coat
had been bleached by the sun. Only the inside showed its once true shade of crimson.

The outside was a dull reddish clay, worn to white in places.

Lila touched the hem of one sleeve as she looked around more carefully. The fabric softened between

her fingers and she let it go quickly, only then realising the fact that the feeling that was nibbling away at

her insides was fear. She hadn't seen anything elvish since the day she was last
completely human. She

had gone to some lengths to avoid hearing Zal and his band, or any other elvish sound. She would

have been content
never to know anything of them ever again. She was glad of the processor that filtered

her dreams
.
She did not want to meet the near-immortal she was charged to preserve with her brief life.

She didn't want to touch his coat.

It was at this moment
that
the fineness of her hearing became more highly attuned. It
was not
Stevie

singing his old song. It was somebody preternaturally quiet who was standing in the shadows, not more

than a body's length from her. It was Zal.

Lila made herself turn very slowly, lest she look surprised
.
Her heart almost burst beneath the control

of her Al-self's attempt
to regulate it. 'There you are,' she said lightly. 'I'm Lila Black, your bodyguard.'

And she realised as soon as she spoke that she had foolishly given her real name, not the pretend name

of the identity she had been meant to assume
.

The flare of her anger fizzed with a curious tang like the citrus twist
in a sparkling drink as she

acknowledged her mistake
.
Oh wait, that
couldn't
have been the zing of wild magic, could it? Couldn't

have been the onset of a Game? Elves, humans and Games were notorious . . . the idea chilled her, but it