Breyguhn seemed genuinely shocked. Sharrow watched glances of delicious complicity alternate with something like horror as they sat at the breakfast table with the rest of the family, listening to their father fret and mourn.
“Lost to us! Lost to us, after all these years! In the family for a millennia and lost to us in my stewardship! Our last asset! The shame!”
Sharrow collected herself, shook her head sadly and helped herself to icebread from the table cooler. Breyguhn sat looking at her, eyes wide.
Sharrow accessed the house system and saw the report the people who’d taken Skave away had sent to her father. They were sending the report by personal letter too. She had no way of intercepting that.
To her relief, it didn’t implicate her or anybody else in the household; the android management/leasing company reckoned somebody had hacked in from outside (they strongly advised a thorough upgrade of the estate’s systems, which they would be honored to quote for at most reasonable rates). She was briefly proud of their judgment that whoever had done the job was quite possibly a professional, they had covered their tracks so well.
The report concluded that the android required a new brain, and as such had to be regarded as a total loss unless there was a major and extremely unlikely change in the law. As all owned androids were extremely valuable regardless of condition, they assumed a substantial claim on the android’s insurance would be the next step, and would retain the machine in their vaults if required, and cooperate with any insurance assessor.
Sharrow put her head in her hands when she read that part. She knew her father no longer had any insurance on Skave—why pay a premium on something that hadn’t gone wrong in seven thousand years, when the same money could win a million in the right bones game? Why, it would be a waste.
She switched off the stick-on and let it roll itself up.
* * *
“That stupid machine was part of our inheritance!” Breyguhn hissed. They were in the skidder rink, waiting between rides while the other adults and children gave up their small cars and walked over the rink’s floor of compacted snow to the side barriers, to be replaced by new drivers. Beyond the shallow bowl of the refrigerated rink the weather was hot and sunny, and every now and again a soft, warm gust of wind would bring a smell of flowers and greenery rolling across the chill of the rink’s own sharply wintery scent.
Breyguhn had taken great delight in charging Sharrow’s skidder several times during the last ride. Sharrow’s preferred method of skidder driving was to avoid all collisions, so as a technique for annoying her these constant crashes were more successful than most of the stratagems Breyguhn employed.
“Oh, so what?” Sharrow said, glancing round to make sure there was nobody to overhear her. “The old fool would only have sold Skave; we were never going to see any of the money it was worth.”
“We might have!” Breyguhn insisted, as the last few people found cars and the klaxon sounded, warning that the signal was about to be transmitted which would switch each skidder’s engine on again.
“Might!” Sharrow laughed. “Not in a million chances, child. He’d have hocked Skave the next time he lost heavily. He’d sell anything to get stake money. He’d sell us to get stake money.” Sharrow made a show of looking her half-sister up and down. “Well, he might get a good price for me, anyway.”
“He loved Skave,” Breyguhn said. “He’d never have sold him.”
“Rubbish,” Sharrow said with prodigious disdain.
“You don’t know!”
“All I know,” Sharrow said coolly as the klaxon sounded and the skidders came alive again, “is that you’re a pain and I can’t wait to get the hell away from here and go…” She flicked her eyebrows and made a thrusting motion with her pelvis, “. . . skiing.”
She twirled her car away over the white surface, avoiding Breyguhn’s crude lunge at her and showering her with icy spray as she raced off round the oval track.
Sharrow’s car stripped its track a minute later, leaving the broad metal bracelet laid out on the snow behind it like the train of some strange dress. Sharrow kicked at the accelerator but the skidder’s automatics had shut the engine off. She thumped her hands off the wheel, grimacing as her sore hand protested by jabbing pain along her arm, then she stood up in the car and waited for a break in the traffic of hurtling skidders and happily shouting, shrieking people, and made her way carefully but quickly across the white surface to the side.
Breyguhn claimed later she had turned back against the flow of traffic to see if she could help Sharrow, after noticing that her skidder had stopped. She knew it was against the rules but she just hadn’t thought. Then her accelerator had jammed and she must have panicked. She felt terrible about hitting Sharrow and crushing her against the barrier and breaking her leg.
Especially as it stopped her going on her skiing holiday.
Sharrow sat up in the bed, surrounded by cushions. Her father held her in his arms, patting her back.
“I know, I know, my love. Everything’s against us just now, isn’t it? Poor Skave taken from us; you with your naughty leg going and breaking itself, poor Brey hardly sleeping because she feels it was her fault, and me with two such unhappy daughters.”
He patted the back of Sharrow’s head as she rested her chin on his shoulder and looked at Breyguhn, who sat in a small seat near the door. Breyguhn crossed her eyes and shook her head quickly from side to side when their father mentioned Skave, made a silent scream and held her thigh when he talked about Sharrow’s leg, and then closed her eyes and tilted her head to one side as though peacefully asleep when he mentioned her.
“But we’ll be all right, won’t we, my pet? The medics will have that silly old leg sorted in no time, won’t they?”
Breyguhn mimed a limp, crooked leg suddenly becoming straight; she waggled it around.
“Of course they will. It’ll be as though it never happened, eh, won’t it? You’ll soon forget all about it, won’t you?”
Breyguhn mimed sudden forgetfulness with a finger to her lips and a series of stagily puzzled expressions.
Sharrow smiled thinly as her father patted her back. She looked at Breyguhn and slowly shook her head.
Breyguhn crossed her arms and sat there, sneering.
Sharrow bedded one of the younger medics while she still had the cast on, and got him to make sure that her leg would never be perfect again; she would always walk with a slight limp and so never forget.
Her father couldn’t understand why his daughter was still lame. He threatened to sue the family medical franchise, but couldn’t afford to.
At university, Sharrow’s limp became a trademark, a talisman, her insignia; like an eye-patch or a dueling scar.
She always did refuse to have any further treatment.
Her father just couldn’t understand it at all.
19
Spoiling Bid
The android and the woman stood beside an old-fashioned automobile on a weed-strewn quay in the old docks, looking out to sea. The antique car hissed every now and again and leaked steam. Behind it, beyond the shells of the ruined warehouses, mists rose perpetually from the warm waters of the inlet, climbing and re-climbing the frost-gray planes of a lifeless sky. Thrial was a red fruit wrapped in tissues of mist. Buildings in the distance wavered on the boundary of visibility.
The helicopter came swinging round the peninsula, its engine-voice rattling like drumfire off the cliffs and buildings looming through the mist. The machine slowed as it crossed the harbor mole, then swiveled in the air and landed quickly and gracefully in a swirling bowl of curling mist and a small storm of tiny stones and dead, windblown leaves.
She rocked on her feet. The android stood stock still.
Miz jumped down from the pilot’s seat, unclipping the control stalk from his ear and handing the instrument to a uniformed man who was sliding into the seat he had vacated. Miz looked pleased with himself. His right hand was lightly bandaged. Zefla and Dloan appeared from the far side o
f the helicopter; Dloan limped a little.
Zefla smiled when she saw Sharrow. “It’s Yada, end of next year, with three old cuties,” she said when they hugged.
“I heard. Hi, Dloan.”
“Good landing, eh?”
“Wonderful, Miz. This is Feril; my legalist and custodian while we’re here.”
“Hello to you all,” the android said. It pointed to the ancient, hissing steam car as it donned a set of driver’s goggles. “Allow me to take you to the Lady Sharrow’s apartments.”
Miz looked out over the misty city. The jet-faced sandstone apartment block sat halfway up a built-up hill looking out over an old canal basin connected by a flight of locks and an inclined plane to the city’s inner harbor. Sharrow’s rooms were on the top floor, one story above the apartment Feril lived in. The android had only recently moved out of the top-floor apartment after renovating it.
It was the androids’ stated intention to return the city of Vembyr to a state resembling its condition during the time of the Lizard Court, when by general agreement the city had been at its most culturally vibrant and architecturally coherent. As well as rebuilding the ancient steam-powered automobile it had used to transport them from the docks, Feril had restored two other apartment blocks over the past few decades; this was its third.
All the rooms were tall. Wood paneling carved with intricate abstract patterns climbed from floors of polished wood to agate and marble dados, from which plain white plaster walls rose to fabulously complicated plaster friezes composed of leaves and vines and little peeking lizard faces. The room they were in was sparsely furnished with black wood and hide furniture that looked both severely formal and strangely organic.
“How much?” Sharrow said.
“Ten million,” Zefla said, nodding. She was standing by a paneled wall, running her hand over it.
Miz spread his arms as he turned from the window. He stood there, silhouetted. “The guy didn’t even look surprised!” he exclaimed.
“Judge did,” Zefla said, peering intently at the paneling. “You could see she’d thought it was just a formality, setting bail that high. She had to consult the Court AI right then, in front of everybody, probably asking if she could re-set the bail beyond anybody’s reach, but the rules say no. So Roa walked free.”
“Who’d risk ten mill on somebody that crazy?” Miz said.
“No clues, I take it?” Sharrow asked.
Zefla left the paneling and came to sit with Sharrow on a long couch. She shrugged. “Bail company. Had the money there in a cash-good chip within the hour. No idea who’s behind it.”
“Maybe it’s the same son-of-a-bitch named the noon race winner Minus A Fifth in Tile yesterday,” Miz said, leaning back against the window sill.
“Oh, Miz,” Zefla said, frowning at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know, I’m being paranoid.”
Sharrow felt the nagging sensation return; that feeling there was something she’d missed, something important.
“Miz?” she said.
“Hmm?”
“Come away from the window, will you?”
“What?” Miz said, frowning and looking round behind him. He eased forward, taking his weight off the glass and stepping away.
Sharrow was aware they were all looking at her. Miz glanced back at the city beyond the window again. She found herself looking round the room for Cenuij. She made a half-exasperated, half-despairing gesture with her arms. “I’m sorry; it’s me who’s paranoid.” She pointed at the window and told Miz, “I’m sure there isn’t a sniper out there, and the glass won’t give way behind you.”
Miz smiled uncertainly at first, then sat down on a pale hide chair.
“Anyway,” Dloan said, flexing his wounded leg a little, “we’re here. What is it we’ve come to see?”
“Something Gorko left behind,” Sharrow told him. She looked round the others, feeling something was wrong, and realized that she was looking for Cenuij again, to catch his gaze. “We go to the warehouse tonight,” she said.
“A warehouse?” Miz said.
“A lot of family possessions are stored here, courtesy of the World Court,” Sharrow said.
“The storage rates are cheap,” Zefla explained to Miz, who was still looking puzzled.
“Some of the stuff’s Gorko’s,” Sharrow told him, “but they haven’t been able to dispose of it yet, and some of it’s still disputed; the Court says it’s theirs, my family says it’s ours.”
“Which category does whatever we’ve come to look at fall into?” Zefla asked.
“The latter,” Sharrow said. “It’s Gorko’s tomb.”
“His tomb?” Miz said.
Sharrow nodded.
Zefla looked mystified. “How did the book lead to the tomb?”
Sharrow looked around the wide, white room, her eyes narrowing. “Tell you somewhere else,” she said.
“Don’t you trust your new friend?” Miz inquired.
“Oh, I trust it,” Sharrow said, looking at the delicate leaves, fronds, stems and flowers described in the patterned plaster filling the angle between wall and ceiling. “But who knows…?”
There was silence in the room for a while. Then Zefla clapped her hands together and said, “There anywhere a girl can get a drink round here?”
“Good idea,” Sharrow said, rising. “Let’s try the City Hotel; we need to get you lot booked in, anyway. They won’t let me stay there but I don’t think I’m banned from the bar.”
The warehouse extended into the distance; section after section, aisle after aisle, shelf after shelf after shelf. Sharrow stood with the others at the entrance, while Feril and the warehouse’s caretaker android turned all the lights on from a great board full of switches, slowly filling the cavern with yellow pools of illumination.
“Sheech,” Zefla said, leaning one elbow on Sharrow’s shoulder. “This Gorko’s shit?”
“Yes,” Sharrow said.
“What, all of it?”
Sharrow looked slowly around as the last few lights flicked on in the distance. “This is just one house,” she said.
“Wow,” Miz said.
“Lady Sharrow,” Feril said. “You wished to see your late grandfather’s tomb?”
“Please,” she nodded.
“This way.”
They walked through the dusty debris of her family’s past, amongst the piled crates and past the stacked boxes and faded labels and yellowing lists tied and pinned to the assorted containers. The items that weren’t boxed were covered in translucent plastic wrapping secured by World Court code-seals.
After a short walk they came to a section of the warehouse dominated by a large plastic-sheeted cube about four meters square, standing on a metal pallet and surrounded by crates, boxes and a variety of loose items also shrouded with the translucent sheeting.
“That is the tomb,” Feril said, pointing at the dark cube.
“Oh,” Miz said. He sounded disappointed. “I’d kind of thought it’d be bigger.”
“That’s all there is,” Sharrow told him.
Feril found a way through to the cube; they trailed after it. “I shall take the wrapping off,” it told them. It found the plastic sheet’s Court seal and ran its fingers over the input surface. The plastic sheet parted around the sarcophagus and Feril and Dloan pulled it off, revealing the black mirror-surface of the tomb’s polished granite. Sharrow pulled a crate over and stood on it to look through the little smoke-glass window halfway up one black wall.
She put one hand to the side of her face to screen out the light from the warehouse, then took a small flashlight from her pocket and shone it through the window.
She looked down at the others. “It’s empty,” she said, trying not to sound shocked.
“Your grandfather’s body is in the Noble’s Temple in Yadayeypon,” Feril said. “It was felt that a warehouse was not a fit place for human remains.”
“Same could be said for Yada,” muttered Miz.
“I didn’t know,” Sharrow admitted. She squinted in through the smoke-glass window again.
“The World Court did not publicize the removal of your grandfather’s remains,” Feril said.
“They take his bike to Yada too?” she asked.
“His bike?” Feril said. “Ah, the vehicle in the tomb with him. No. That is…here,” the android said, turning and pointing at a long, translucent bundle.
“Ah well,” Sharrow said, clicking off the torch and stepping down from the pallet. She looked around. “I really wanted to pay my respects to the old man, but…”
“I’m sorry,” Feril said, “I should have realized. You asked to see the tomb and…” Its dull mirror-eyes gazed levelly at her, reflecting the black stone tomb behind. “How silly of me. I do apologize.”
“That’s all right.” Sharrow sighed, looking around at the other boxes. She shrugged. “Would you mind if I have a look at some of this other stuff? I knew house Tzant well…”
“By all means,” the android said. It opened the seals on a variety of nearby crates and packages while Dloan and Miz pulled the wrappings off.
“That’s fine,” Sharrow said, after the android had opened twenty or so of the plastic bundles and—far from showing any sign of stopping—actually seemed to be speeding up.
Feril, bent over to de-seal a tall crate, stood immediately, bowed to Sharrow and said, “Please, look at your leisure. Unless you need me for anything else, I shall be at or near the door.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The android walked away, disappearing between the stacked cases.
“Never seen an android embarrassed before,” Zefla said after a little while.
“Idiot,” Miz said, sitting on a low sideboard constructed from blackwood and seagrain and edged with brushed platinum studded with opals.
“Oh well,” Dloan said. “At least some of this stuff looks interesting…” He gazed round at the opened packages.
“I take it this fouls up the plan,” Miz said.
“Hmm,” Sharrow said, frowning. She stroked a heavy fur cloak of silver inlaid within black, which lay draped over a huge crystal bowl crusted with jewels and strung with loops of precious metals; they both sat on a mirror-rug covering an antique holotank.
Against a Dark Background Page 41
