Vengeance (20 page)

"Whatever. Just go.” He waved her away. “Go on in, before there's trouble."

"Worrywart.” She dashed for the lobby, turned, and blew him a kiss, but he had already driven off, his mind on his precious engrams.

She smiled contentedly. He was not only handsome but scarily bright as well, one of the first generation of Russians to accept they were no longer a superpower, instead working and living abroad, truly international citizens.

They'd met when she was visiting St. Petersburg. She'd sneaked off to a student bar one evening. Sergei was drinking there as well. She'd told friends: “We got drunk, ended up in bed, and married three months later. I called in some favours after we married and got him a job at the Institute.” The Institute knew immediately they'd hit the jackpot. Five years had flown by, while the conflict bubbled into outright war.

Before she entered the council chambers, she keyed her wrisp. The watchface changed into an image of Sergei's. “Lunch at one,” she instructed it.

"Okay,” the wrisp replied. “Quiet or loud reminder?"

"Quiet, as usual,” she said. It reverted to watchface.

Inside, the council meeting was the usual squabble. The empty seats left by Red May and the other Parti Homo councillors cast shadows over the proceedings, and sometimes a momentary silence fell when her name was mentioned.

Once the council had argued over how to fund housing projects without council tax increases, on how to keep a balance between police and criminals in high-tension areas, and how to form traffic-calming schemes. Now the arguments were how to stop the armed gangs from Fishponds massacring the Protestant refugees, whether to let the bars along The Strip stay open around the clock for the militia, and ways to stay alive under the daily bombardment from the warring forces. At one point, the session almost degenerated into chaos, but once the council leader deflected the blame from those attending onto Parti Homo, things eased a little.

Crisis averted, the morning session ended. At one o'clock Karen nodded to her friend Linda. “Lunch?” she mouthed.

"Are we going to meet Sergei?” Linda grinned with the total enthusiasm she brought to everything.

As they left the chambers Karen said, “If I was the jealous type, you'd be first person I'd bump off, the way you flirt with Sergei."

"Just as well you can trust me like your sister.” Linda grinned at Karen's raised eyebrow. “And you love seeing him embarrassed."

The canteen was busy, as only a few were prepared to brave the outdoors. Karen ignored the familiar feeling of being watched as they ventured outside. “I think we'd better cross separately. We can split the attention of any snipers prowling the rooftops,” Karen suggested.

"I don't,” Linda said heatedly. “Safety in numbers."

"And attract their attention that way?” Karen said mischievously.

"Doesn't matter.” Linda shrugged. “The conflict's been bubbling away for years now. There are only so many precautions we can take. If our number's up, it doesn't matter whether we're alone or not, does it?"

The swirling snow of earlier on had stopped. Overhead, the defence microts sparkled, diamonds in the sunlight. There was a constant race to update them against incoming nanots. As fast as the enemy could find new measures, they would combat them, and the game would begin again.

"Ready?” Linda shivered.

"Ready.” They sprinted, then Karen saw a red dot appear on Linda's back, but before she could shout, there was a flash and Linda crumpled.

Karen threw herself down beside her friend.

"Hurt bad,” Linda gasped. She smiled faintly. “Guess my number's up."

"Can you move?” Karen tugged at Linda.

"No. Get help."

Karen knew calling the paramedics was the logical thing to do, but even in a high-priority zone, they'd take forever.
We don't let go of what's ours that easily
, she thought.
Quicker to get her to safety myself.

She hoped the microts had isolated the sniper, preventing him from getting in a second shot. Cursing and panting, she dragged Linda across the grass. Finally they reached the other side. Inevitably the paramedics then arrived, both thanking Karen and criticising her for moving Linda.

Karen insisted on joining Linda in the ambulance, and as they sped toward the Infirmary, called Sergei. “Linda's been sniped,” she said tersely.

"Shit. She okay?
You
okay?"

"I'm fine.” Karen watched as they passed the blackened stumps of firebombed buildings, rotten teeth in the gums that were the city's streets. “They didn't touch me."

Linda lay on the stretcher, her pallor deepening beneath the oxygen mask. Her eyes were shut, and Karen hoped it was sleep and not a descent into coma. “Linda's been hit by a laser. There may be internal damage. Call you later."

"I'll be waiting.” He would too. He was absent-minded but cared deeply about those close to him.

The ambulance screeched to a halt, and they erupted into the hospital. Karen found her credentials only got her so far, so she sat and waited.

A harassed-looking doctor, an animated scarecrow with a white coat, eventually joined her. For a moment Karen dared hope, until she saw his hangdog look.

Before he could give her his rote-learnt lines, she interrupted. “She's dead, isn't she?"

There was the barest of nods. “I'm sorry,” he said. She thought a tear trickled down his face but decided she was probably mistaken.

"She was my oldest friend.” They could have been holding separate conversations, but both knew better. “We were at school together. We were going to change the world."

He said, “I had a friend, another medic. She told me ‘I'm tired of fighting to keep people alive and losing all the time. I've lost three today. I've fought harder each time, and still we can't save them.'” He added, “My friend was killed a week later, crossing the lines. After they gang-raped her."

"I'm sorry.” She thought,
I'm supposed to be the one grieving
. But she couldn't help sympathising. He looked so forlorn.

"No, I'm sorry,” he said, regaining his bedside manner. “You're the one who's lost a friend. Forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive.” She was equally firm, and he responded with the faintest of smiles.

"Thank you,” he said. “Did she have relatives?"

"None she was in touch with.” They'd been each other's families, Sergei and she, Linda and Michael. “She had a partner."

He nodded. “We'll need to contact him.” He flared, “What on earth were you thinking of, putting yourself at risk like that?"

She said, “Her husband works with mine. And we always took the view that when your number's up, it's up."

"How will you get back?"

"My husband'll pick me up,” Karen said. “I'll ask him to bring Michael."

The spellhound had whirled through the kaleidoscope of reversed motion for so long, its mind had numbed to the wonders it passed. It had never been a great student of history, leaving that to Jocasta, who devoured knowledge. The spellhound was too busy living for the moment to worry about anything else. It would sometimes give a cursory thought to its eventual fate, which it accepted to a large extent was reliant on its owner's caprices. To the spellhound, the past was done, was irrelevant.

It knew little of mankind's golden age, when humanity had altered itself into a multitude of strange forms, nor of its eventual exodus. It knew little of the Renaissance, when for a few brief years, humanity had almost recaptured its past glories, turning the world into a paradise to which people retreated when they were shut off from the stars by the powers beyond the solar system's end. It knew even less of the primitive years before the years of glory.

It tired of the images flickering outside the bubble. It wished it knew more about temporal mechanics, about why it was possible for O'Malley to flee into the past but not the future. Doubtless there was some very good reason for it. It should have studied the spell in more detail, but there'd been so little time—they'd concentrated on the spells they thought most likely to be used. For all it knew, every time it breathed the air, it killed off the microbe that changed history, but decided against worrying about it. Either the time stream would accept its actions, or what it did was predetermined. It might, it knew, even try to return to a future where it ceased to exist, but it put the thought from its mind.

There'd been no time to snatch any last-minute drinks. It was tough, but had taken a lot of punishment lately—a blow to the head, withdrawal from the addictive anaesthetic, and now a punishing chase.

It was preoccupied and almost missed O'Malley dropping back into now-time, so had to perform an emergency stop. It re-entered without its accumulated momentum being able to disperse. Just as brakes that are stamped on radiate heat, so did the spellhound's bubble of space-time. It emerged in the middle of a flaming fireball.

The spellhound was blown clear of the main blast but left buried underneath rubble and ruin, so weak and injured its systems shut down in shock to give them time to heal. The explosion from its re-entry sent nervous combatants scurrying for cover; shots clattered through a night suddenly lit by flash fires. The wind caught the flames and fanned them, and sent the smoke into billowing, spiralling columns.

It was weeks before the spellhound was strong enough to dig itself out and start hunting across the war-scarred city. It had to start its search anew, in the middle of a city stranger than those beneath alien stars.

The next week was a blur. Karen postponed her visit to Gramma, and getting the message through about the cancellation was an epic in itself. She arranged Linda's quiet funeral, and after the cremation a few friends stayed for drinks.

Michael took Linda's death much harder than Karen expected. A big, dour Ulsterman, he'd left only a year before the massacres forced the Protestant Diaspora, and unlike many, had found a life before sheer weight of numbers forced his compatriots into refugee camps.

He wasn't given to great displays of emotion but instead had buried himself in work. Linda had lit up his life as she had so many others', transmuting him into someone almost pleasant, for all his mass of prejudices against ‘Cotholics ond quares,’ as he called them in his blancmange of an accent.

For days, Sergei said, Michael sat staring into space. Then reflection turned to bitterness. Now he hated everyone. He raged against the politicians who had been powerless to stop her death, raged against the gay sniper, for he had no doubt it was a gay sniper, despite the regular acts of agent provocateurs on both sides. And he raged most of all against Parti Homo, the political wing of the gay insurgents, and Red May Vickery, their founder.

His unrelenting bigotry had always been difficult to stomach, and it was harder than ever now. Karen told herself it was his way of grieving, but he wasn't pleasant to be around.

He threw himself into his work, often working double shifts, as if with Linda gone, it was the Holy Grail.

Sergei came home looking increasingly wan, admitting Michael was getting harder to work with. He'd explained one night, “You know we're working on the cognitive maps they developed at the turn of the millenium?"

"Uh-huh,” Karen mumbled round a forkful of spaghetti.

"To adjust behavioural mechanics, with nanots rewiring the brain rather than drugs?"

Karen nodded. “Sounds close to mind control."

"Ever the civil rights activist,” Sergei tried to make a joke of his irritation. “You're right though, there are immense implications for civil rights, but with the ever-decreasing efficacy of prescriptive drugs, it's an alternative we can't ignore."

He played with his own dinner, then looked up, and Karen noticed how haggard he looked. He'd lost weight. The effort of keeping an eye on Michael whilst doing his own work was taking its toll. “Michael seems to be straying outside the parameters of the project,” he admitted quietly.

"Perhaps you should distance yourself from him."

"I can't do that.” Sergei put down his fork. “Sorry,” he grimaced at the almost untouched spaghetti. “No, he's a good man—he'll be okay if we give him a little time."

Karen's own workload was easing, which only made things worse, as she had more time to brood and watch the devastation Linda's death wreaked on the others. She decided to visit her grandmother, her last living relative. It had been weeks since she'd cancelled the last visit, far longer than she'd ever gone between visits. She told herself it had absolutely nothing to do with Linda's death.

"The problem with Gramma's place,” Karen said to another friend one day, “is that it's right across town, always beyond the battle lines. A safe area one day can be lethal the next."

The day she decided to visit Gramma, they drove into work as they had every day since Linda had died. She kissed Sergei goodbye.

"I'll see you later.” He grinned at her.

"Is that a promise or a threat?” she teased.

"More a declaration of intent."

"Do you want to meet at lunchtime?"

"Maybe.” He sounded noncommittal.

"Sooner or later,” she said gently, “I'll have to cross the green again."

"I know,” he admitted. “But I don't know if I'm ready for it yet.” He added briskly, “I'll see you later. Wish me luck."

"Is he that bad?” Meaning Michael.

He shrugged. “He seems to hate everything at the moment. He doesn't say much, but it's there all the time. It's my fault I have a wife who's alive, it's your fault ... well, you know."

"I know.” She kissed him goodbye. “Give him time."

O'Malley had by now seen enough of the past to realise it was no more pleasant than his own time. The place was too cold and wet, the natives too hostile. The huge explosion on the outskirts had restarted the fighting, and everyone was tense, the armed gangs nervously fingering their weapons.

He'd considered leaving the city, but he still knew too little to risk using the Spell of Elsewhere. He'd had to let the natives babble at him for the first few days whilst his familiar built up enough vocabulary to understand them and take partial control of his speech centre. They'd clearly thought him feebleminded, but he wasn't worried about that. When he started to understand what was going on, a few conversations at the bus station convinced him that trying to leave overland was too dangerous. To confine the conflict, both the multinational task force and combatants ran checkpoints on all roads out of the city. The bus station was full of refugees, but at least they were on the homeless registers. O'Malley wouldn't show up on the lists, which would land him in jail or get him killed. So he shelved leaving the city and tried instead to blend in at the bus station. He was thrown out every night and huddled around makeshift bonfires trying to stay warm in the nighttime cold. He queued for the nightly handout of meagre soup and thick black bread that nearly took his teeth with it the first time he tried to chew it.