The Beauty of Our Weapons

by Jilly Paddock

  She knows too much about us, Zenni said, and I shared his unease. Given her history, I suppose that’s inevitable. I am surprised that Jansen let slip so many of his secrets. He was a very self-controlled and taciturn man.

  He was an evil, manipulative sociopath! I don’t want to think of the man—those memories should stay dead and buried. I shook my head and gave my attention back to Meeka. “All you had from him is half of the story. I didn’t deserve Jansen’s enmity, yet he chased me across the galaxy like a hound out of hell!”

  “Yes, he hated you.” Memory clouded her face. “Such hate! It possessed him, twisted him up inside like a man broken on the rack. Sometimes it seemed to me that his hatred for Anna was far stronger than the love he felt for me, and then I hated you as well!”

  I could see the truth of that, burning in waves across her aura, time-whetted and cruel. I wondered then why Erik had married this girl. She had all the advantages of youth certainly, but there was nothing remarkable about her. Perhaps he had loved her, although I didn’t believe that the old bastard had been capable of such an unselfish emotion. I thought of the means of Jansen’s death—Meeka had far more reason to hate me than she knew.

  “I’m sorry that we had to meet,” I said, armouring my mind against her loathing. “And sorrier still that it had to be here and now. Destiny can be a mean bitch when she puts her mind to it.”

  “I’ve suffered at her hands, that’s for sure.” Meeka turned her head away from me, sniffing to clear the tears from her eyes. In profile her face was regal, a princess from ancient, desert lands, too proud to weep before her enemy. “I thought I’d paid for my sins ten times over, yet here I am paying again. Against all hope, help arrives and it has to be you. I presume you have a vested interest in not finding Erik Jansen’s daughter?”

  Her tone was pure acid and the sarcasm rankled. I dipped into my self-control and managed to sound only mildly irritated. “I was sent out here by Michael Collins to rescue Chandre. If the child is with her, I’ll save her too. I don’t ask you to trust me—hell will freeze over before you can bring yourself to do that—but I must have your cooperation to stand any chance of finding the pair of them. Lyall’s in no condition to help me, so you’ll have to, regardless of your personal feelings towards me. For a start, I need to know exactly what happened.”

  Meeka scowled at me, because I was right. “It all started the day before yesterday. Lyall had gone down to the coast to do some scuba-diving, on his own as the rest of us weren’t interested in that. I had a bad headache and decided to stay in, so Chandre offered to look after Angel and took her out to play in the forest.” She stared down at the floor. “They didn’t come back. I wasn’t worried until after Lyall returned, late in the afternoon. We searched for them, of course, and we found people who had seen them, both tourists and Tambou, so we were able to piece together where they’d gone. At the end of the trail there were reports of an accident. A tree had apparently fallen, injuring both of them and they’d been taken to the medical centre.”

  “So you went there?”

  “Yes.” The girl chewed at her bottom lip. “It was there that the story fell apart. The staff at the centre were confused, each telling a different version of the truth. One remembered Chandre bringing Angel in for treatment of some minor cuts and bruising and then leaving, while another said that a child had been admitted with a suspected head injury and transferred up to Pentak Station. Lyall said all of them were lying. He caused a scene and got us in to see the director of the centre, who categorically denied that anyone had been brought in, certainly not a woman and a little girl. When we came back here, it was worse. All of Angel’s things had vanished, Chandre’s too, and there was no record of either of them arriving at the hotel, not even a trace of the original booking, which had been made in Chandre’s name.”

  “What about all of the paperwork?”

  “They had that, made out for Lyall. It even had his mark at the bottom—the signature was so good a forgery that it was almost authentic.” Meeka curled her hands into fists, reliving the frustration of that moment. “We called the local police to report all of it, then spoke to the Terran consulate. Neither of them believed us when we reported Chandre and Angel missing—how can you lose someone who wasn’t there in the first place? The absence of records made us into liars. It was as if both of them had never existed.”

  “A very elaborate cover-up.” I whistled through my teeth. “I wonder who worked the trick and what they’re trying to hide?”

  Meeka fiddled with a bead on one of her braids, the gesture a traitor denying her composed facade. Her knowledge that I could read her anxiety like a book only served to increase it. I waited for her to voice her inner fear. “Do you think Angel and Chandre might be dead?”

  “What did Lyall think?”

  “He was certain that Chandre was alive and unharmed.” She sighed. “I wish I had his faith.”

  Suddenly I stopped seeing her as an adversary, a lingering extension of Jansen’s hatred. Already she’d carried her share of sorrow, losing her husband and left alone to raise a baby while still a child herself. Now her little daughter was gone, her only companion on an alien world was seriously ill and a would-be friend had turned out to be a foe. She was as helpless as a kitten on an ice-floe—who could blame the girl for being near breaking point?

  “Take Lyall’s word for it. He’d know if any harm had come to his lady-love.” I tried to keep my voice gentle, but her antipathy coloured my reactions to her. “Can you tell me exactly where Chandre went and what time she left the hotel?”

  “I can do better than that.” She went to the desk and produced a large folded sheet of paper. It was a tourist map of the area with an ink trail along several of the paths and concise notes in Lyall’s florid scrawl. “Are you going to follow the trail? Do you think you’ll spot something that we missed?”

  “I doubt it. Lyall’s very experienced in the field—I discovered that to my cost a long time ago. No, I just want to get the feel of the place and anyway, we can’t make any move until Lyall recovers. Will you stay here and keep an eye on him?”

  She nodded and I rose to leave, then another thought struck me. “Can you recall what Chandre was wearing when you last saw her?”

  “Cream leggings and a multi-coloured shirt without sleeves, mainly blue, I think. Canvas shoes and a plaited belt, both dark blue. No jewellery or carrysack, but a wide-brimmed straw hat, because she’d sunburnt her nose on the previous day.”

  “And your daughter? Please describe her to me.”

  “She’s two, but tall for her age. She had a frock on, white with blue flowers and I’d put her hair into two bunches, tied with blue ribbon.”

  “Does she look like you?”

  Meeka laughed, abruptly, unashamedly. “Ah, no! Angel has Jan’s colouring, the way he looked before all that worry turned him grey. Her hair is long and blonde, practically down to her shoulders, and her eyes are blue. She’s a very beautiful child, everyone says so. Is that enough to go on? I’m afraid I don’t have any images or holos with me. This planet is so anti-tech that I left my phone and datapad back on Earth.”

  “It’ll do. I’ll be back before dark, but if I’m not, don’t worry.”

  “What if you vanish too?” Her ambivalence on that grim possibility was obvious to me.

  “I won’t. This is only a scouting expedition, after all.”

  Meeka smiled, a tight, feral grimace. “I don’t need to trust in your skills, do I? If you mess up, your Zenith will scream for more help!”

  I didn’t grace that with a reply, stalking out of the room.

  You were a little hard on her, Zenni said. She can’t help who she is.

  Nor can I. I shook my head. Jansen may be dead but I can’t seem to lay his ghost. The man haunts me at every turn, just as he did when he was alive.

  We did kill him, Anna.

  I killed him. I corrected. You let me and Chandre sanctioned the deed. What would that poo
r girl think of us all if only she knew?

  She mustn’t find out. Zenni warned. It would destroy her.

  And if we fail to find her precious Angel in one piece, won’t that do the same?

  Chapter Four: A Swashbuckler at Heart

  The main thoroughfare out of Krystallya was to the south-east of the city on level one. A lofty, ornate avenue led to an archway where tall, gilded gates were chained back against the walls in a symbolic gesture that the way to the city was never closed. Beyond the Dreamgate I expected a wide, paved highway and found instead a narrow track through a soft. lush meadow. The temptation of all that thick grass was too much and I kicked off my sandals, sending them back up to Brimstone when nobody was looking, and walking barefoot between the daisies—I’m a natural girl when I get the chance. Within a hundred yards the path vanished into the Forest of Dreams and I followed it, keeping to Chandre’s route with the aid of the annotated map. The woodland was curiously Terran in flavour, a mix of beech, oak and chestnut, all dressed in the crisp, bright green of spring foliage, with pink and cream candles of flowers on the chestnuts. The path ran crookedly through the airy spaces and low, fragrant undergrowth beneath the trees. It was all too easy to relax in such surroundings, but I tried to keep alert. Tambouret was a veritable paradise, yet I had seen the threat that ran so shallow under its surface.

  I tracked Chandre for two hours or more, compressing her leisurely afternoon into a brisk walk. I paused where the forest had been cleared to make way for a garden of flowers and herbs, where a silver brook laughed its way through the trees. From what Lyall had written on the map I knew that the pair I shadowed had spent an hour here. They had whiled away another at the next glade I came to, where a collection of tame animals and birds were kept to amuse the visitors. I marched purposefully across the clearing, only glancing from side to side, and as I reached the centre a low growl just behind me stopped me short. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled at the nearness of danger and yet I had heard no sound of its approach. I held my breath and turned, very slowly, to face the guardian of this menagerie. “Sweet heaven!”

  In the dappled sunlight under the trees stood an immense tiger. The light rippled on its copper and ebony hide, silhouetting the lines of its attentive ears and bristling whiskers, and burning balefully in the deeps of its emerald eyes. It growled once more, displaying its irritation and its superbly pointed teeth.

  A fascinating specimen. Was there a trace of amusement in my partner’s voice? I’d stand very still if I were you!

  Zenni? I reached out warily into the great cat’s mind to turn aside its anger and my probe bounced back in my face, like a rubber ball hurled against a brick wall. I realised then what Zenni had known at first sight; the animal was a construct, a computer-brain in an artificially grown body. The marriage of the two was perfect and the tiger bared its teeth in another menacing snarl.

  It’s a simulacrum. Tambouret is renowned for its construct technology. This example probably operates on a simple behaviour set and its pseudo-aggressive reaction was triggered by the speed at which you crossed its domain. It won’t harm you. It wouldn’t be allowed to roam free if it were programmed for combat.

  Even as he was speaking, I sat down on the soft grass and smiled broadly at the tiger. “Here, kitty. Who’s a good pussycat then?”

  Its mood changed in that instant, the snarl flipping over into an inscrutable feline smile. It came up to me on those noiseless pads and butted me playfully in the shoulder. When I scratched its broad, striped head it began to purr, for all the world like an ordinary house-cat. I crooned to it, moving to rub at the silken fur at the base of its ear and my fingers struck a small metal disc, the size of a tiny coin.

  The cerebral interface. Zenni explained. It’s used for information input, to update its behaviour programs.

  Can we tap into its memory, if it has one? I brought my left hand up to tickle under its chin and kept my right over the disc.

  Of course. Zenni’s probe buzzed along the nerves in my arm. As I suspected, its routines are unsophisticated. It keeps an eye on the animals, stops them straying and protects them from harm. Wait, this is interesting. It records events in real-time visual, probably to keep track of things between maintenance visits. I’ll run through it.

  I waited as he located the relevant piece and passed it on to me. The tiger’s field of vision seemed distorted to my limited human eyes, but I recognised Chandre in the outfit that had been described to me and with her the little girl, a tiny heart-faced cherub with corn-yellow pigtails, laughing as she played with the animals. Zenni skipped through the record, showing me snippets of the time the pair had spent here. The tiger had allowed the child to ride on its back to the limits of the clearing, and her innocent delight at the treat was a poignant reminder that both Chandre and Angel were lost.

  I broke contact, giving the tiger a final pat before standing up. The simulacrum was prepared to be friendly now, stalking to heel and pressing its striped velvet bulk against my legs. It escorted me to the edge of its glade but would go no further. For a while it watched my retreating back, the stentorian thrum of its purr carrying on the breeze, then it went back to its duties in the little zoo.

  How did you know it wasn’t real? I asked Zenni.

  Easy—there are no tigers on Tambouret. The largest carnivore is a native one, a black dog-like creature a little smaller than a Terran wolf. That knowledge told me that the great cat must be a construct.

  You might have warned me. I was scared witless!

  Hardly, Anna. It takes more than a tiger to faze you.

  That’s because all of the worst predators walk on two legs.

  Thirty minutes later I reached Chandre’s last recorded position. A river flowed through the forest, very wide and sluggish here, so close to its end in the sea. The Tambou had created a meadow along its banks, leaving only the odd tree to provide a little shade. It seemed to be a favourite haunt of tourist and citizen alike, a place to bathe in sun or water, a place to relax and play. The largest remaining tree was riven almost in two and the hollow interior of its trunk was equipped with ladders and climbing rings. Surprisingly the giant was still alive and its leafy branches were strung with ropes and swings. According to Lyall’s eye-witness reports, Chandre had let Angel play here for a time and then they had spent the rest of the afternoon by the river. I walked across to where the water lapped lazily at an improbably sandy beach, which had all the trappings of a fine place to dream away a summer’s day.

  This is as far as Lyall’s notes go. I sat down to cool my tired feet in the water, unfolding the map. Presumably someone here told him about the so-called accident. Well, it didn’t happen here, that’s for sure. All of these trees are well tended and not the kind to suddenly shed a branch.

  Which route would Chandre have taken back to Krystallya?

  With a tired, hungry two year-old, the most direct one I’d guess. I ran my finger over the choice of paths. This one looks like our best bet.

  Zenni paused for a moment. I agree. That’s the way you must go.

  When we played a hunch, we played to win—that’s what made us prime-pair, I suppose. The path I’d chosen was narrow and less well used than my outward route. Within half a mile I found it blocked by the fallen branch, a bough over a yard thick. It must have landed with a tremendous crash and I didn’t give much for the chances of anything unlucky enough to have been underneath at the time. Leaving the path, I studied the guilty tree, an elderly but healthy oak. After reassuring myself that no-one was watching, I levitated up to the wound for a closer and much more illuminating inspection. This didn’t fall by chance, did it?

  No, Anna. It appears to have been cut through quite deliberately, Zenni agreed. The initial cut was probably made with a heavy-duty laser, judging by the traces of charring still visible, but it’s been chopped about with an axe to give an irregular look. A pathetic attempt at deception. It wouldn’t fool a child.

  How long would it tak
e to lase through something that thick?

  Two, three minutes, depending on the power of the laser.

  I floated down to earth, dusting off my hands. Nobody’s going to stand and wait that long for a branch to fall on them, especially not our smart boss-lady. No trained assassin would stoop to methods as sloppy as this.

  I walked along one side of the bough and then the other. Midway along the second side something caught my eye and I crouched to examine a brown stain on the grass. Fragments of the substance flaked off onto my fingertips and I sniffed at them suspiciously. Blood?

  Send some up. Zenni suggested. I’ll run it through the machine.

  I obeyed, then parted the grass to reveal a scrap of fabric crumpled under the branch, blue and white calico. Most people would have needed an antigrav sled to move the log or, given the Tambou’s loathing of all things technical, a block and tackle—I willed it lighter than air and it bobbed up like a cork. The action reaped a richer reward; along with the calico I found a blue ribbon, an adult’s canvas shoe and a crushed straw hat lying in a small lake of the rusty-brown stuff in the hollow under the oak branch.

  The question is are these the relics of a real accident or the props for an elaborately stage-managed hoax? I ran the ribbon through my fingers, coiled it up and tucked it away in Caron’s ungenerous cleavage—forty five centuries of so-called civilisation and nobody’s yet got around to putting pockets in leotards. So it goes. Anything on that sample yet?

  It is blood, but the red cells have nuclei, so it didn’t come from a mammal. Tambouret never had any birds of its own, so it must be an Earth species, and from an estimate of the spilt volume, my first guess would be that the donor was a chicken. I can run a DNA scan to confirm that if you want, but it’ll take three or four hours.