“Are you trying to make a valid point here or are we just raking over past crimes?”
“My, but you’re touchy tonight!” He shook his head and I felt the anguish rise out of the heart of him, a lurid violet scream. “Why didn’t you die, Anna? How in the twelve hells of the prime worlds did you survive?”
I had to give him the truth. “I was healed.”
“Who by? None of those stupid peasants could have put you back together.”
“One did, the witch-woman from Dulyss. She wasn’t Lysseye, of course. She was an off-worlder.”
Lyall laughed sharply. “All our marvellous and intricate schemes, crafted and honed to perfection—and some alien medic hauls your arse out of the fire! Anna, you have an inordinate amount of luck, far more than us lesser mortals could ever dream of!” His humour subsided. “One of these days I swear it’s going to run out.”
“But not tomorrow.” I insisted. “If you have any use for prayer, pray that, for Chandre’s sake.”
Lyall bowed his head and said nothing more.
Chapter Seven: Quaestor, Fibonacci, Melissant
I left Lyall when a cute ginger-maned chambermaid knocked shyly at the door to help the invalid to bed. My own room was brimming over with perfume from the terraces, a cool sea of moss-rose and jasmine, and its stony corners were crowded with shadows. Outside, the night was glorious, an alien sky aflame with stars and a breeze whispering its subtle music to the sleepy city. Paradise indeed, yet somewhere beneath its shell nestled a knot of suffering, Chandre lost and an innocent babe in peril. That wrongness itched like a nettle on my skin and I knew there was no way I could sleep here, so I mussed the bed and flitted back up to Brimstone.
I materialised on the flight deck in darkness, arriving in that instant before Zenni tripped the lights. As they came up I found that I stood in a litter of used coffee cups and abandoned plates, of scraps and sheets of paper, broken pencils and discarded probes and screwdrivers, all evidence of Jeb’s deviant working methods. Why is it that computer wizards always resort to archaic pen and paper to map out their logic-flows and schematics?
“He’s in the galley.” Zenni supplied. “I presume he’s cooking, but given the noxious volatile chemicals I’m detecting in the air outflow, I didn’t like to ask.”
“Nice one, Hal. I think you’re getting the hang of this ‘humour’ business!” I scurried down the corridor and peered around the galley door, the closest you could get to cramming two bodies into such a narrow space. My spouse was cremating pig meat and on being offered a share, I opted for the better part of valour and declined. Jeb slapped most of a flitch of blackened bacon between the vaguely-symmetrical halves of a loaf, decorated the heap ad lib with fiery sauce and carried his prize into the bedroom. I trailed after, sniffing my disapproval at the stench of charred flesh.
“I suppose you like yours raw?” was all the response I got, around the devouring of the massive sandwich. “Sweet Goddess, that makes us incompatible! Quick, go see if there’s a divorce lawyer in the house!”
“Put a hold on that. I’m sure I can stand you, warts and all, for—ooh, what?—another twenty-four hours, at least!” I discarded sandals and bounced on the end of the bed, but not even the choppy motion made his appetite falter. “Are you going to eat all of that foul meat?”
“Some of us didn’t get dinner.” Jeb complained. “Some of us have been working our balls off all day.”
“I’ve never seen anyone work so fast and with such accuracy,” Zenni said, with evident respect. “Jeb isolated the alien program-routines sneaked in by the viral creche, wiped it from all of my core memories and then disabled the illicit commands it had inserted.”
“What had it been set up to do?”
“Take the Freeberg-Dane unit off-line and paralyse your Zenith in one fell swoop.” Jeb removed a splash of red sauce from his chin with the back of his hand. “It was a kill string—three little magic words and Zenni drops into coma, leaving you all alone in your head. Don’t suppose you work so well like that, huh?”
“I might as well be helpless, lost in the pain and shock.” I tried to banish the memory, feeling Zenni wince. “What were the codewords? I kind of liked Jansen’s choices—zeitgeist, fylfot—so very teutonic!”
“It was EI’s usual format, or so I understand. Three exotic words used in a specific order with a certain accent on the syllables.” He flinched as he spoke them. “Quaestor, fibonacci, melissant!”
Zenni’s shiver sang through our link, as if he drew breath after a long pause. “You weren’t one hundred percent sure you’d got them, were you?”
“Only the Goddess plays absolutes!” Jeb grinned, neon satisfaction blazing in his aura. “There was little to risk. I knew I could get you back up and running again if I missed my guess.”
“And Anna?” The Zenith’s tone was icy. “Could you have programmed her back out of shock?”
“Take it easy—nothing happened,” I said softly. “We’d have had to try them eventually anyhow, just to be safe.”
“Sorry.” Jeb hung his head in puppy-dog sorrow, play-acting, yet sincere. “So, honey, how was your day?”
I told him all of it, and Zenni added the parts of the story I’d missed out or glossed over. It was a three coffee-cup saga and by the time it was done, we were comfortably sprawled together on the bed.
“It is a really shit plan,” Jeb said, after minimal consideration. “Trouble is, with the lousy cards you’ve been dealt there isn’t any other way to play the hand.”
“Then I’ll go with it. SantDenis isn’t going to come up with anything of use within the time span, and the cavalry is probably six systems away even as we speak.”
Jeb patted my cheek. “Is life with I-spy-EI always like this?”
“This is a gentle initiation, my love. It’s usually worse!”
His clear grey eyes filled with concern. “There’s one thing bothering me above all else—that impromptu seance.”
“My education in occult matters was sorely lacking.” I admitted. “It wasn’t considered a core subject at my finishing school.”
“I have no data on magic or any of its related subsets.” Zenni added. “As our pet expert in fields supernatural, perhaps you’d better enlighten us.”
“The Misses Treebone are well known in psychic circles, famous mediums and scryers, or as their critics would say, infamous. One of the founding families of Siobhos the Tresbonnes were, old Terran stock, accounted witches even before they left the Mother-world. If a brace of their ancestors had been hung at Salem I wouldn’t be at all surprised. The present generation seems to consist of an indeterminate number of sisters and their daughters, each named after a semi-precious stone and each having her own unique variety of inborn talent.” He frowned. “These aren’t fakers, Anna-love. Some of their skills have been tested out under lab conditions. What they do is for real.”
“So what did Amethyst summon up to talk to us?”
“Are you sure you want me to give it a name?” He wriggled closer, trying to distract me. “Sometimes these things are easier to face if you don’t pin ’em down, if you leave their edges fuzzy.”
“I like naming the enemy.” SantDenis’s parting remark echoed in my ears. “Call it for me.”
Jeb sighed. “Sounds like a demon to me.”
“Demons? Aren’t such beasties knit too far into the ranks of orthodox religion to fit into your belief-system?”
“If you choose to walk the paths that I have, you can’t fail to meet them; evil, insubstantial creatures that impinge upon reality, dark things that have never been human and hate us for it. What else can you call them but demon-kind?” He glanced up at Zenni’s remote eye. “What about you, my logical friend—do you believe in gods and devils?”
“Religion isn’t part of my programming. The words, yes, but true understanding of faith, belief, sin and evil—that’s beyond me.”
Jeb grimaced. “How comfortable for you!”
�
��When did you ever raise demons?” I pulled at his hair to snag his full attention.
“During certain rituals and ceremonies.” He shrugged. “You can imagine the sort of thing.”
“I can’t—do tell!”
He shook his head. “Another time, sweetheart. Just take it from me, you don’t want to tangle with them.”
“Do you think I want any of this? Given a free choice I’d be back on Earth now, in that creaky old bed in Merryweather’s cabin, with you beside me and Zenni in the basement, and Chandre would be slumming on some beach, safe in Lyall’s arms, and Meeka would have her Angel back, and nothing would be amiss in our lives.” A chill strummed across the nerve endings in my back, a silent dirge that lifted the hair on the nape of my neck. “But that isn’t to be, not for a while.”
“It isn’t all bad.” Jeb grinned and wound his long limbs around me in a spidery embrace. “At least we do have the bed!”
***
The chime of an incoming call sliced through my nebulous, mazy dreams and I blinked myself awake. Jeb stirred beside me, groaning a protest at the noise.
“It’s Collins.” Zenni informed.
“Michael? All the way from Earth?”
“He’s using the most-urgent channel, an ultra-fast quantum beam punched through from Merope, and he’s asked me to relay his call down to the surface. He assumes that you’re packing a phone or wearing an earbud.”
“I’ll take it here.” I rubbed my eyelids apart. “Audio only.”
“It is only audio—there’s no visual component to this type of communication. It’s plain digital code and the voices are synthesised at either end. Bear in mind that there will be some delay between each segment of the conversation. It’s astoundingly fast but not instant.”
“How much delay?”
Zenni laughed softly. “Not much, just enough to be annoying.”
“Anna?” There was a measure of impatience in Michael’s reedy voice that carried over the artificial link.
“I’m listening. What dire emergency prompted this call?” I waited through the transmission interval with little patience.
“There’s no new crisis.” Was that disappointment in his tone? “We received a communication from Terrapol yesterday, a request to provide assistance in a presumed kidnapping case on Tambouret, that of one Angel Agneetha Jansen. No relation to the late Professor, I assume?”
“His daughter.”
There was a longer pause, the kind of held-breath shimmering silence that might be due to surprise or guilt. Without seeing Michael’s face I couldn’t judge the mix of emotions reflected there. “The Nidjella woman’s child? It had slipped my mind that Erik had chosen to acknowledge it. How old is it now?”
“Angel is two years old. I’m hoping that when I find Chandre the child will be with her.”
“When you find her? Don’t tell me you have no idea where she is yet?”
“Okay, I won’t tell you. Consider yourself not told.” I peered sideways at Jeb, who was pretending to be asleep and hanging on every word. “Get to the point, Michael, because I’m busy.”
“The point is that the Consulate on Tambouret asked Terrapol for urgent help in the matter, and they threw the hot potato into our laps.” From his school-masterish tone I knew I’d rattled him. “Now, I can tell them that the situation is in hand and we’ll get someone there as soon as we can, or I can make your presence on planet official and you can liaise with the local law enforcement agency.”
“That would be rather awkward—in fact, it would break my cover. The detective on the case thinks I’m a tourist from Barnard Three, only interested in the disappearance because my family have known Chandre for years.” The very idea of playing unwelcome sidekick to SantDenis made me nauseous. “He doesn’t want any help by the way, especially from a spook—he told me so himself. He doesn’t believe that either of the victims are important enough to warrant that degree of interference.”
“A spook?” Collins muttered an obscenity not quite transmitted by the comm-link. “Isn’t that typical? If people catch the merest whiff of rumour about EI all they pick up on is the fear factor; telepaths raiding their minds, teleporters threatening their privacy, kinets rifling through their valuables, with never a thought spared for the positive uses of psionics.”
“EI uses that fear as a weapon.” I reminded. “Here was I assuming that was a policy decision, and all the time it was just the poor misguided public being cruel to their heroic protectors.”
“Anna, don’t start with me, girl!” At any other time I’d have picked up that gauntlet—today I let him go on. “I’ll play for time with Terrapol, give them the impression that I’m sending a pair in, but that will only buy you a day or two. Can you resolve the situation within forty-eight hours?”
“To be honest with you, Michael, I don’t know if we can.”
He thawed a fraction, I swear he did. “Do you want back-up? I can get another pair out to Tambouret by Friday. Ebony is close enough and so is Bryn—your choice.”
“More muscle isn’t going to help.”
“Okay, I’ll hold off on assigning more agents. Do your best and call me as soon as you find Chandre, dead or alive.”
My suspicious nature went on the march again. “Michael, tell me one thing, if you will. Who gets Chandre’s job, if she doesn’t make it through this?”
This time the break was longer, so long I thought that Collins had ended the call.
“We don’t have anyone ready or able to take control of Operations. It would be a serious problem.” That was the truth—it rang clear in his voice. “So you’d better recover her with all her faculties intact, hadn’t you? Collins out.”
Next to me, Jeb opened his eyes, but didn’t speak until the comm-link had clicked off. “A quantum beam, eh? I thought that only the military or the upper echelons of the government had access to expensive tech like that.”
“EI are both.”
“Perhaps you should have accepted some help. Now our old ally Bryn I could well do without, but you could have had him send us Ebony. She sounds interesting.”
“Might be a he.” I wound a finger into the charcoal crop of hair on his chest, which seemed to multiply by the day. “Besides, I prefer to work alone. You can’t trust those nasty agent-pairs, can you?”
“Certainly not! They’re dishonest, underhand, sneaky—” he punctuated each insult with a tickle. “Lying, deceitful, rude, uncouth—and utterly gorgeous into the bargain!”
“Am not rude!” Each time I squirmed out of reach he stretched further, so I used the tidal flow of the bed to plant a fairly gentle cat-kick in his stomach, which curtailed my torment. “And I’m as couth as the next woman!”
“Oh, sure!” He panted, curling up to protect his soft underbelly. “Provided her name’s Lucrezia Borgia, that is! Stop trying to do me damage, girl, and go hunt down your mystery!”
“Zenni, what time is it on Tambouret?”
“A little after ten o’clock.”
“Why did you let us sleep so late? Lyall must be wondering where I am.”
“Better get down there pronto.” Jeb ruffled my hair, the smile running askew on the scarred side of his face, his mood taking a downturn into serious. “This is the crux of your mission, that miraculous pivot in the timeline when you transmute disaster into glorious success. Want me to leave Zenni alone today?”
“That would be best. I need his undivided attention.”
“I know.” There was a trace of sorrow in his eyes. “You’ll always need Zenni far more than you need me—and what right do I have to complain about that? You two were an item long before we ever met. I’ll hold off running the final response curves until Chandre and the little girl are no longer in jeopardy.”
Jeb would never let me loose on the inside of his skull, never grant me that freedom. Telepathy was a taboo thing with us, a forbidden intimacy. He let me mindspeak into his uppermost levels when necessary and that was all. Sometimes he locked d
own the doors of his mind, bolted and barred them, supposing himself safe within that privacy, never suspecting how much an unprincipled adept like me could glean from constant empathy and subtle, high-altitude scans. Now I tried to read past the crooked smile and found his mental wards in place. Such a little push would take them down, yet I couldn’t do it, couldn’t betray his trust. “You’re very certain that we’re going to solve this soon.”
“My faith in you is absolute.” That was the truth; Jeb projected honesty, yet tightened up the defences over his mind. “Just walk carefully. I’ve spent most of my adult life running in the opposite direction to marriage, but now that it’s captured me, I find I quite like it. I’m not done with being your husband yet.”
“This is no time to wax lyrical on me, Lucas!” My grin was as phoney as his. “I don’t need the emotional baggage, not today, not when I’m running on too little data with too many rogue variables, knowing that if I slip Chandre and the child fall with me, and maybe Lyall and Meeka too. I don’t have a solid plan—I don’t really know what I’m going to do.”
“You’ll wade in as Anna-Zenni and do your very best. Self-doubt isn’t like you, so leave it behind.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Win or lose, I’ll be up here to lend a hand if I can. Whether you all survive, or none of you do, I’ll know what you did, and there’ll be at least one fool up here who’ll love you for it.”
“Make that two,” said Zenni.
***
Back in the Opal Garden, I ransacked Caron’s wardrobe for something Anna could go to work in, ending up with a cropped vest and leggings in a dull sage-green and tan botanical print. I added a belt with a heavy buckle, a useful weapon in a pinch, and dallied over a choice of sandals or canvas pumps, finally opting to leave my feet bare. My new topaz ring and ear bauble I’d left behind on Brimstone; there was a pale circle on the wrong finger to mark the lack of the gold band, while the rest of my exposed skin had been washed honey-brown by a single day under Tambouret’s sun. Just as I was using a wispy chiffon scarf to tie my fiery ringlets up into a tail, there came a knock at the door.
The Beauty of Our Weapons Page 14
