I shrugged at the chaos that had once been an elegant office. “I’d hardly call this lightly. I hope I haven’t done any permanent harm to your pairs.”
“That remains to be seen.” Beth was tight-lipped and I couldn’t blame her for that disapproval—I’d laid enough problems on her plate.
There’s nothing more you can do here. Zenni nudged me gently. Go home, Anna. Time will heal all this.
I hope you’re right, or you’ll be my one and only friend. I met Chandre’s eyes. “I hate to walk out on you like this, but I’m going to. If you want me, I’ll be at my apartment.”
“Take some time out to get over this.” She smiled bravely, although her resolve shook at the edges. “Don’t worry, Anna, we’ll all be back to normal in a day or two.”
I picked my way over the debris and through a building crippled with shock and fear. I saw a couple of repair crews shaking their heads over the burnt spaghetti in the power conduits, but most of the staff were sitting under the red emergency lights, demoralised and nursing their nerves. There were a dozen security guards in reception, milling around like sheep in their wolves’ clothing of heavy-duty combat armour. One of them blocked my exit, his bulk filling up the doorway.
“Nobody leaves,” he declared. “We’re at battle status. I have orders to prevent anyone leaving the building, orders from Dr Collins himself.”
“Dr Collins is in sickbay.” I looked past the man’s visor, into his blue eyes. “Care to join him?”
He almost laughed at my implied threat, secure in six foot six of height and two twenty pounds of brainless bulk. “Now, now, miss, we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, would we?”
Normally I would have shrugged it off and had them call Chandre for clearance, but today was definitely not a normal day. Today I’d had it with all the little people who tried to push me around. With one hand I prised the laser-rifle out of his grip, with the other I unlooped the strap of his helmet. As he reached out to grab me, I caught his elbow and threw him with my good hand, tripping the catches on his armour as he fell. In the blink of an eye the invulnerable soldier who had blocked my way was transformed into a helpless red-faced heap at my feet, naked except for a pair of blue polka-dot boxer shorts.
“Nice pants, big boy!” I snapped the energy-pack out of his rifle and threw the weapon back to him, taking the wind out of him a second time. “Shall we run through that conversation again, from the top? And this time, don’t patronise me, and add a touch more respect!”
As enjoyable as that was, it may have been a little unwise, Zenni said. We may have to make a run for it.
Eleven other rifles sighted on me as the men behind them began to realise what I’d done to their hapless comrade. I was considering a rapid exit, when the receptionist stepped in to save my hide.
“Gentlemen!” Her voice was pitched at normal levels, yet carried across the room like a whiplash. “Don’t mess with the lady! She’s a little out of your league, the best we have on active service.”
The leader of the group wavered, then lifted his visor and blessed me with an ingratiating smile. “Sorry for the bother, ma’am. We didn’t know you. Will you take an apology?”
“Sure.” I returned the smile, then directed it at the man on the ground. “Please accept mine. Nothing personal.”
“No, ma’am. I was just the big lunk who got in your way.” He grinned ruefully. “I’m glad you were only playing!”
I hauled him back on his feet and left them all to recover. The atmosphere outside was as hot and unpleasant as that in Collins’s office. The storm had moved south, away from the town, but the sky was obscured by gloomy clouds and it was drizzling. I ducked out of sight around a corner of the building and ’ported home before I got drenched.
Chapter Eighteen: Rosebud
There were three messages logged on my terminal when I got back to the apartment. Needing some grounding in the mundane, I hit the ‘play’ key.
“Greetings, newly-married woman!” said Alexi Valiente, and I didn’t need video to picture his grin. “Hey, Anna, couldn’t you wait for me? I’m devastated! Seriously, huge congrats to both of you. I’ve picked up a present for you, a great big carved mask thing, like the heads out on Easter Island. Jeb’ll love it, if I can ever persuade somebody to fly it back to SanFran for me! See you soon, Madame Lucas. Ciao!”
He’s a sweetheart, isn’t he?
Could Martha’s son be anything else? Zenni had paused the playback, now he cued the next message.
“Hi, semi-sis.” It was Stuart’s voice, and boy did my half-brother sound pissed off! “Lexi tells me that you’ve tied the knot, to some dumb unemployed musician. Bad mistake—I give it three months, max! I’ll bet he’s only after your money anyway. I won’t be back in town for a while ’cos I’m bumming round the islands, catching a tan and sampling all the local booze. Oh, by the way, I dumped Tempe—had to, really, after she made a play for Lexi and he laughed in her face. Stupid girl was almost as smart-mouthed as you!”
The message ended as abruptly as it had begun and I shook my head. My closest living relative—he could at least be polite!
He sounded angry. I extrapolate from that and other vocal clues that he lied to you, and Miss Stormy Tempest dumped him instead of the other way round.
You’re really getting a handle on this human psychology shit, aren’t you? Run the last log.
“Hello, Anna.” It was Tom’s voice. “Just an update on the Corporation’s stock situation. The market’s flooded with Delany shares and the price has dipped substantially, although not alarmingly. I took the liberty of buying some back, in your name, and totally against the advice of our accountants. When you get back, I’d appreciate it if you’d square it with them. A couple in particular are after my blood and are putting pressure out for my resignation. I know you’ll haul my ass out of the flames, Anna, so thanks, and out.”
How good it is to be indispensible. Send a memo to the guilty parties, to the effect that I trust Mr Greville’s judgement utterly and back his actions to the hilt.
And the temperature of this memo—hot or cold?
Frosty, I think, about ten below freezing.
There was a scant ten second pause. Done.
The long afternoon slipped away, like honey down a crack. I found I could settle to nothing, pacing aimlessly from room to room, a trapped creature, unsettled and unable to rest. I fixed myself a salad and then couldn’t eat. I made coffee, left it to go cold and had to pour it away. I mended the holes in my skin and took some pills for my headache, but once the pain had gone I was left with a hollow dullness that wouldn’t shift. The leafy avenue outside was deserted, all my neighbours taking shelter from the thunderhead that rumbled around the hills, periodically lashing the windows with its fury. I flinched at each fork of lightning, my delicate senses bruised by the closest claps of thunder. In my mind’s eye all I could see was a whole building cast into darkness, with electronics shot to hell, power cables burning in their channels and panic spreading like a virus. After a minor eternity of three or four hours, the storm departed and I crept into a shower to wash the sweat away.
I shouldn’t have been able to do so much damage. I whispered to Zenni, safe under the cool flow of the water, where no-one could hear me.
Not with psionics, no. Your natural-born talent takes great delight in surprising us, doesn’t it?
I could have done more... Even now I trembled at how close I’d come to killing. So many people, and I could have left them all dead! What am I capable of?
We don’t know your limits, Anna. How many grains of sand are there on a beach or how many stars in the sky? How do you weigh the moon? How wide and high is the universe, and how many years will it live?
I’m scared, Zenni. Be serious, will you?
He was silent for a long time and I started counting off the seconds under my breath, as I had estimated the nearness of the storm. I’d reached eighteen miles before my partner spoke.
I don�
��t know how to measure your powers, not with any margin of safety. We could see how much you can lift with TK, adding kilo after kilo until you can’t get the mass off the ground. We could find out how far you can teleport, jumping a parsec further each time until you collapse with exhaustion. With Lyall’s help, we could discover if there’s an upper range on your telepathy. As for how much you can hurt somebody or how many people you can kill with one mental blast, I don’t see how we can ethically measure that. Anyhow, all the figures we derive from these experiments would be meaningless. You perform much better under stress, and better still in peril of your life. I’ve seen you exceed the boundaries set by the Freeberg-Dane unit many times, sometimes exponentially, beating it by a power of ten, or a thousand, or right off the scale. You ask me what you’re capable of, and I have to say this—almost anything you want to do.
Is that your best answer?
’Fraid so.
I killed the spray and wiped my face dry. How do you weigh the moon?
You don’t—and why would you even want to?
As I emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and trying to tame my fluffy hair, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and reached out with a scan. It was a mindless thing, its mass far less than that of a human. Armed with that data I was merely astonished to see the lemur-construct dart out of a corner and leap up onto my table. It sat upright, its butterfly-masked face turning in my direction, its pink fingers interlaced across the buff fur of its belly and its banded mahogany and jet tail stuck stiffly out at an angle across its hind paws.
“How on earth do you come to be here?” I asked aloud.
“This unit was instructed to find you.”
“Who sent you?”
“This unit was told that you would know.” The construct stretched out its splendid tail and combed through the fur with nimble fingers, splitting the skin along its entire length. It extracted a black cylinder, two inches across and a foot long from the concealed pouch, then re-zipped its fur and offered the object to me. “This unit was instructed to give this to you.”
I took the tube, amazed at its lightness. With its mission accomplished, the simulacrum whirled around and leapt from the table.
“Wait!” I dived to intercept, but the lemur vanished with a distinct ‘pop!’ as air rushed into the space it had occupied. “Damn! Since when did they fit constructs with the means to teleport?”
Never, according to my data. Zenni sketched a frown. Someone’s playing tricks on you.
Who do I know with that kind of ability, aside from twenty-five other agent-pairs?
Only twenty, Anna. Five are out of action.
Thank you, Mister Tact-and-Diplomacy! I fiddled with the black cylinder and it split laterally. Cradled in a cocoon of inky velvet was a single rosebud, a dappling of dew still clinging to its cobalt petals. I lifted it from its sanctuary and was swathed in its sorcerous fragrance. Impaled on one of its thorns was a droplet of red-gold crystal.
Express delivery from Tambouret? Zenni guessed. A rose from a demon?
I held the bloom up to the light and the thorn-stabbed gem winked at me. On an impulse I touched it and, as I did so, it melted into a teardrop of blood, warm on my fingertips. The spell of summoning cast, I was aware of a presence with me in the room.
Druj? I shaped the name in my head. Or is it Draoi or Ahriman?
All three, and many more. He slipped the answer just under my defences, tip-toeing on the edges of my mind. It took you a long time to see through my act, Anna-Marie.
It’s a mortal failing to miss the obvious. I ran through all the unanswered questions and all but one were irrelevant. Why the long-distance call, my Lord Demon?
No reason. I felt his mental shrug and could picture it. I thought you’d like the flower.
I do, thank you. I stood in silence for a while, at a loss for what to say, then the block lifted. You kept your word.
An immortal failing, and one of my weaknesses. He laughed. If one breaks one’s own rules, what’s the point of the game? As a player yourself, you understand that. Ah, little miss, how it grieves me that we’ll never be opponents again!
And this time—who won?
Druj seemed so close that I could almost see him, so close that another step would make him solid. He smiled, and the shadows in the corners of the room crept forwards to grovel about his feet. I lost. Au revoir, Anna-Marie.
“Wait!” Once again I was too late. With a sound like the beating of great wings, Druj was gone.
I opened my eyes, unaware of the point during our inner conversation that I’d closed them. The drop of blood had cooled on my finger and, as I watched, it faded to the clarity of water and trickled over my hand, simultaneously expanding and freezing into a new shape. An ice-trinket lay across my palm, snow-crystal diamonds and water-blue sapphires that hardened into reality. I stared wide-eyed at Jeanne’s necklace, the white-gold length of it colder than the bleak mid-winter where it rested against my skin.
“Is it possible?” There was a tremor in my voice.
Anything’s possible. Zenni echoed my disbelief. I think.
Moving like an automaton, I splashed water into a slim vase and set the rose in the window. Using the dark glass as a mirror, I fastened the necklace about my throat and stared at the face reflected there, above the uncanny blossom from the abyss. A pale mask looked back at me, its eyes, the sapphires and the rose all ultramarine, a perfect match.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, entranced by the demon’s lingering magic. Zenni was silent, afraid to analyse what had happened, knowing his logic wasn’t equal to the task. I studied the image painted on the post-storm twilight, Anna in the glass, so absorbed that I missed the sound of the door and the soft footfalls over the rug. I wasn’t aware of Jeb’s arrival until he touched me on the shoulder. I unfroze with a sigh and turned slowly.
“Mark that one down to me.” His scar puckered as he frowned. “It must be a first when clumsy Jeb Lucas can creep up on Earth’s best hot-shot espionage team!”
“Aren’t you back early?”
“A little. I went back to visit our friend Dr Ayres, but they wouldn’t let me into the building. The place was in pandemonium—if I didn’t know any better I’d say they were expecting an attack. You got any idea what was going on?”
“They were clearing up after one.”
His frown deepened as anxiety kicked in. “Who hit the place?”
“Understand that this is classified data.” I knew that I didn’t have to remind Jeb, but he nodded anyway. “I did.” Zenni corrected me and I added “We did.”
“Why, Anna?”
“Because they were pushing too hard. Because they ask too much of me. Because I’m sick of the dirty games they play.” I felt the fears that he masked. “Don’t fret, I didn’t hurt anyone. Bruises, turned ankles and headaches—that’s all the damage your Anna’s done today.”
“Did you resign or were you fired?”
“Neither. Chandre, in her infinite wisdom, has decided to forgive me and let me stay, but whether she can convince Michael of the sense in that when he wakes up, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Let’s drop the subject, huh?”
“Sure thing. Aren’t you a little overdressed—a towel and diamonds indeed?” He grinned and ran a finger over the necklace. “This is nice. A gift from a secret lover, eh?”
“You’ve seen it before, silly! It was Jeanne’s, my mother’s. Lewis bought it for her and left it to me. I thought I’d lost it on Tambouret, but someone sent it back.”
Jeb glanced past me and saw the blue rose for the first time. I watched the questions swirl and coalesce in his mind. “Anna?”
“Don’t ask! One day I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but not now.” I smiled with a superficial brightness. “Why don’t we both get dressed up and go out for dinner? Tom and Martha owe us a party—perhaps we can get a table at that high-tech restaurant of theirs. Tonight I want to forget all about what I am and what I do. I w
ant to be diverted, occupied and entertained. Tonight I don’t want to be alone.”
“What about Zenni?”
“Oh, you won’t have to buy dinner for him,” I said, in mock seriousness. “He doesn’t eat!”
I avoided Jeb’s grab for my hair, but he got the towel. Unencumbered, I reached the bedroom first and he also got a pillow in the face, which came back at me so fast that I barely had time to duck. Zenni laughed inside my head at our antics. Things had taken a definite turn towards normality.
About The Author
Jilly Paddock writes SF and fantasy. She used to grow bacteria for a living, but took early retirement in 2011. She’s been a Pro Se writer since 2014, has stories in several anthologies and has also self-published some of her books. She goes to SF conventions in the UK, appearing on panels and doing readings. She collects glass perfume bottles and tarot decks, and has dabbled in many crafts, including knitting, cross stitch embroidery, jewellery making and silversmithing. She lives in a very flat bit of the world with an editor and reviewer who has far too many books and CDs.
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