redRobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Half the planet thought Kate was the sister of a saint, the other half wanted her on trial for reformista war crimes committed when 20,000 pre-teens took over Northern Mexico in Joan’s name.

  Twelve-year-olds with antiquated Kalashnikovs had been a feature of subSahal warfare for two centuries. Ever since the animist army of the SPLA first took Islamic Khartoum with ex-Soviet AK47s donated by a Bible Belt baptist show. The Children of God were something new. At least they were to Day Effé and to Washington politicians who thought that kind of shit didn’t happen in what was still laughingly called the First World.

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ Axl made it sound like he always went round offering aid to complete strangers, which would have amused the Colt. But from the look on Kate’s face, it seemed his help wasn’t something she needed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cutting A Deal

  The onions made his eyes water but Axl kept at it, cutting out the rotten bits and tossing the onion flesh that was still edible into an iron bucket. He was sitting on a bench in the kitchen at Escondido preparing supper.

  The Hideaway.

  Axl didn’t know if it was Kate who’d called the place El Escondido. He only knew Father Sylvester wasn’t based there and the monastery was unoccupied except for Kate, the kid, Kate’s servant Louis and the Clone. And except for the kid they were all down in the village, doing something he wasn’t meant to know about.

  There was nothing of value in the enormous house, unless you liked old statues and musty wall hangings that reeked of damp and dust. Axl knew. He’d laboriously checked every room from the slab-floored cellars to the empty attic with its broken roof tiles that let heat out and rain in.

  Mind you, Axl hadn’t expected to find some elegant little smartbook belonging to Kate, still powered up and containing details of transparent bank accounts at Hong Kong Suisse in Zurich. Not straight off. Unlike His Excellency, Axl didn’t believe in miracles. He believed in sex and cheap drugs and all the other shallow gratifications that made life bearable.

  Only you couldn’t get 4-MTA in Cocheforet. In fact, from what Axl remembered from the newsfeeds back home, you couldn’t score anywhere on Samsara. The wheelworld was a drug-free zone. Privately, Axl doubted that. All he needed to make life bearable was a heat source, some fairly basic chemicals and a half-intelligent twelve-year-old amateur chemist. And if crystalMeth was off the menu then someone somewhere had to be cooking china white. All that took was bloody poppies, for God’s sake, the kind Kate kept doping him with.

  But if the kid was to be believed there was no meth, no china white and not even any cooking sulphate. There would be—of course—somewhere. In one of the tourist towns just outside Vajrayana. Some makeshift kitchen would be turning out meth by the tray. The big problem for Axl was he didn’t know where that town was and couldn’t afford the time to get there even if he did.

  On the other hand, supplies aside, he could hardly claim life wasn’t interesting. In the last week he’d got beaten up, fucked somebody’s wife without even bothering about retro Virus, taken down that fat sergeant… What was even better, he’d made contact with Kate without having to leap through too many hoops. All he need do now was get into the Japanese girl’s confidence and find out what the fuck was making Kate so jumpy.

  It was hardly a difficult assignment. He went in, he found Kate and grabbed her. Then he revealed himself as a member of the Rights Police, pulled a Section 53i on Tsongkhapa and took the woman to Vajrayana for repatriation. The job was so basic even a kid could have done it. Axl knew that for a fact, the Cardinal had told him so.

  Axl tossed down his knife.

  Slouched next to him on a bench in the kitchen, a mound of raw onions at her feet, Mai grinned sourly. She was meant to be peeling the onions and he was only there to keep her company, but so far he’d done all the work.

  ‘Jesus, you really need ice, don’t you?’

  Ice, a life, some guaranteed way off Samsara… Axl got through a lot of his life on nodding, and the bits where a nod didn’t work could usually be covered by silence or a simple shake of the head. Chuck in the trademark looks that ran from quizzical to coldly amused and in many ways his working vocabulary was no better than it had been back when he was nine.

  ‘Kate’s got medical drugs,’ Mai told Axl. ‘Want me to look for you?’

  Axl did, though he went along with her, climbing the narrow back stairs from the kitchen to a small landing so slowly that Mai had to stop to let him catch up Axl didn’t mind taking his time. The kid had a nice arse and it helped that all she wore on her bottom half was a pair of thin black leggings so tight they edged between her buttocks with every step she took. On top Mai had a short red jacket machined from cloth that looked like it had started out as a dog blanket.

  Axl kept watching her arse until she paused at the landing. And then he looked at what she was looking at. Attached next to a door in the far wall was an open padlock, hooked over a clasp. Both were new.

  ‘My room,’ she said bitterly. ‘Kate has this one,’ Mai jerked her thumb towards a single door behind her. To the right of the narrow landing were two other doors, both shut.

  ‘And in there?’ Axl asked, as if he hadn’t already looked.

  'The Clone and Louis ...'

  ‘There’s no one else living in this house?’

  The girl looked at him.

  ‘How about nearby?’

  ‘Kate’s followers,’ Mai said sourly, making it obvious she had little time for the other ‘fugees in Cocheforet. ‘No one else, okay? Or I’d have found them, believe me…’ The smile on her childlike face wasn’t kind. But then she wasn’t doing this to be nice to Axl, she was doing it to spite Kate. Which didn’t matter a fuck to Axl, because complicity was complicity.

  ‘Look,’ said Mai. ‘You want to help me find some stuff or not?’

  Stuff, when they found it, was in a cheap plastic tray inside a folded blanket crammed under Kate’s bed. Mai crawled under to get it while Axl searched the almost-bare room a second time, moving fast.

  A wooden crucifix was nailed up above a wood-framed single bed that sported only one sheet and a tattered low-tog quilt over a mattress of uncovered foam that was no thicker than a smart book.

  The walls were white, with no pictures or rugs. The floor was also bare, its faded red tiles cold as ice to the touch. Apart from Kate’s bed, the only other item of furniture in that room was a simple wooden desk made from oak. It had three drawers down each side, all empty of everything except dust and dead insects. What clothes Kate had—and there weren’t many—rested in neat piles on one side of the door.

  Axl had been around enough to know what punishment looked like. Since it was unlikely anyone else had imposed this cell on Kate, she had to be inflicting it on herself. Which, maybe wasn’t so unusual from the sister of the Pope who had cleared St Peter’s of all its art treasures and thrown open the gates of the Holy City to all comers. And God did they come. Hyps, Ishies, the Wild Tribe. The influx made the medieval crusades look like ordered outings.

  ‘Sweet fuck.’

  Axl looked round to find Mai sitting on the bed tossing bubblepacs back into the tray, one after another. ‘Dandelion, arnica, teatree oil…’ She read a few more out in disgust and then scooped the rest noisily back into the tray and slung it under Kate’s bed. ‘You’re out of luck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Axl as he slid the drawers out of their runners and skimmed his fingers across the backs. Nada. Nothing taped to the underside of the desk either.

  ‘What you looking for?’ Mai’s head was hooked to one side, her smile quizzical. She was definitely interested.

  ‘Whatever the fuck she’s got,’ said Axl shortly and Mai laughed. The only problem was Kate had nothing worth taking and less than nothing hidden. No decent drugs, no weapons, no illegal comms kit, no smart book.

  Sliding the drawers back onto their runners, Axl took down the wooden crucifix to check that it wasn’t hollow and that K
ate had nothing interesting taped to the back.

  ‘You know,’ Mai said suddenly, ‘you don’t act like a ‘fugee.’ She blushed. ‘It’s like, you look like shit but you don’t act like you’ve lost everything…’

  He could still kill her, of course. That was Axl’s first thought as he reached the bed. Get her body out of the house before the others got back. Or just stack it in one of the tiny storerooms in the cellar. The second thought to cross his mind was to do a runner, exit Cocheforet. Axl’s third thought was the right one—empathise, loop the emotion and feed it back. That was what they’d all been taught in basic psych. So that was what he did.

  Axl shrugged. ‘I haven’t lost everything,’ he told Mai, dropping to a crouch in front of her. ‘When you start out with fuck all, there’s fuck all for anyone else to take away. If you know what I mean.’

  Casually Axl let one finger brush the back of Mai’s wrist.

  Check the eyes. Examine the mouth for signs of disbelief. Now was when he was meant to flick back his hand and slam fragments of nasal bone up into her brain, if that’s what he was going to do. While she was still considering.

  But Axl didn’t need to. And more to the point, he realised, he didn’t want to. Looking at the Japanese kid was like looking across race, gender and age into a mirror image of himself. She wasn’t someone who remembered her past, she survived it.

  He knew when a kid was wearing scars like armour. When real anger burned so fierce it had to be kept smothered under glib dismissal or a sullen sneer. She could walk though a crowd and they’d notice her but not smile. Want to bed her, yes, but no more. Something in those dark eyes filtered out friendship and cut her loose.

  But if he wanted Kate he was going to have to reel the kid in.

  ‘What’s your real name?’ Axl asked.

  ‘Mai,’ said Mai. ‘That’s the first one I remember.’ Mai’s gaze was level as she looked him over. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Axl Borja. I don’t know my real name.’

  They shook.

  ‘You planning to stay here long?’ Mai’s question wasn’t as simple as it seemed. They both knew that. And this time it was her fingers that reached out to touch his wrist.

  ‘Long as it takes,’ said Axl. He didn’t say what it was. Just as he didn’t ask what she meant by here.

  ‘Well, make it fast. I want the fuck out.’

  ‘So we just set out over the high plateau, hand in hand?’

  ‘No,’ Mai grinned. ‘We ride on your horse.’ She had the grace to blush at that.

  He’d been right, Axl realised. She had tried to take his mare and the beast hadn’t let her. That at least explained why she’d bothered to stick around while Clone dragged some stranger back to the house for Kate to treat. He was her ticket out of there.

  Axl had a pretty good idea what she was offering by way of payment.

  ‘I don’t have a problem with that, if you don’t…’ Mai said simply.

  He didn’t. Though he’d have to deal later with telling the kid he planned to stick around for a few more days yet, maybe longer.

  Mai took off her top herself, undoing its clumsy buttons and sliding out of the red jacket to reveal high olive-tipped breasts, each tiny enough to be cupped in a single hand. She had slightly full hips and a belly button that sank into the curve of her soft stomach.

  And then Axl stopped looking as Mai’s arms tightened around his neck and she pulled him in close. She smelt of onions, sweat and smoke from the yak-dung kitchen fire. He’d known expensive perfume smell much worse. And then even that thought was forgotten as Mai began to undo his tattered cotton shirt.

  Her fingers started at the bottom and never once touched Axl’s skin as she threaded each tiny button through its slit until there were no more to undo.

  His own fingers fumbled as they found the waist of her leggings and began to push them down over her hips.

  Beneath the black leggings she wore a rainbow thong, so out of place on Samsara that Axl looked twice at the tiny triangle of thermo-reactive material that pulsed with her body heat, its silk so tight against her flesh that Axl could make out the soft mound of her naked mons and the flame orange outline of her labia.

  Mai grinned and Axl briefly wondered if this was planned in advance. Either way, he didn’t really care too much about anything except the feeling of her breasts squashed tight against his bare chest and her back tensed beneath his hand as he pulled her against him.

  Soon that wasn’t enough and so Axl slid one hand down the girl’s leg to caress her thigh and then moved it slowly up to cup the curve of her behind. Mai giggled, softly biting Axl’s shoulder as he slid his hand up again to edge one finger under the strap of her thong until his finger vanished between the cheeks of her arse. Any lower and Axl could reach the puckered black rose of her anus or the waiting lips below that but Axl stayed where he was.

  Thinking nothing.

  Remembering nothing.

  Just inhaling the musk that rose off Mai’s body like smoke.

  One of them was holding their breath and Axl had a feeling it was probably him. He didn’t see the Clone, Louis or Kate struggling up the path from the village, just as they didn’t see him even though the shutters to Kate’s bedroom window were wide open.

  Axl didn’t hear them enter Kate’s room either. All he knew was that Mai froze in his arms and then a vast man with a shaved head and a knife scar that circled his thick throat like a necklace stood beside the bed. And behind the man, almost hidden by his wide shoulders, stood Kate, her eyes wide with shock and bitter with fury.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Outriders

  Two facts saved Axl’s life. The first was that everyone from Kate to Clone was too busy searching for the missing bits of the dead Pope’s mind to want the added complication of killing him.

  Axl didn’t know that, just as he had no idea he was the person with Pope Joan’s missing memory stuffed deep in the piss-drenched pocket of his greatcoat. But then splitting Joan’s senses into five and stringing the memory beads on the wires of a kid’s dreamcatcher had been Father Sylvester’s way of keeping them not just safe but also anonymous.

  The second thing that prevented Clone slitting Axl’s throat was that Mai still wore a thong. True, the scrap of smart-silk was all she did wear, but it was enough to save him. Axl had few-to-no illusions about that as Clone herded him down the kitchen stairs, never quite touching Axl. As if to touch him might trigger violence the huge man wouldn’t know how to control.

  Not until Axl reached the bottom stair did he hear the first ringing slap and Mai’s loud four-letter reply. Axl wanted to go back for the kid but Clone crowded right behind him, fingers clenched into vast fists as if the ox-like man was fighting his need to use them. It took a minute for Mai’s swearing to subside and then even her sobs faded to leave only slaps that came hard and rhythmic, meted out in absolute silence as if the woman delivering them was too furious to speak.

  ‘Poisonous little bitch, isn’t she?’ Axl said. Not surprisingly the mute didn’t answer. So Axl took down his coat from a peg and shrugged himself into it, PaxForce piss and all. He had a feeling Kate wasn’t going to want him staying at Escondido any more.

  When the woman finally came downstairs Axl got a chance to swear at her to her face, but he might have been as mute as Clone for all the response his insults got. When she spoke it was to dismiss him.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ Kate’s voice was glacial, colder even than her face. ‘But you’re a coward and a liar. I don’t believe you were ever one of us. To abuse Juanita like that, a child…’

  ‘Her name’s Mai,’ said Axl hotly, ‘and the kid’s a whore.’ He wanted to add, and what’s with this us? But it was already too late.

  Kate gave Clone an abrupt nod and the huge man bundled Axl outside into the ever present, early-evening drizzle that was such a feature of Cocheforet’s microclimate. It took the Clone and Axl forty minutes to reach the inn and the Clone didn�
�t take his knife point out of Axl’s back the whole way.

  * * * *

  And now the drizzle was gone, the air was thinner, Cocheforet was a morning’s ride behind him and Axl still wasn’t sure which cut deepest, being accused of abusing a kid or being told he was a coward and liar. And he had no intention of stopping to wonder why both insults hurt so badly.

  Somewhere ahead was the carrion ground. Which, given the Clone’s permanent snarl as he rode beside Axl, wasn’t a reassuring thought. The man’s wide face was set hard like concrete and Axl had a nasty feeling that if Clone got his way, he’d be joining those other bodies. And the crude-looking revolver that Tukten, the Tibetan boy from the Inn, carried in one hand was the weapon for the job.

  The sullen Tibetan brat did nothing but look at the revolver and whistle tunelessly. That Tukten distrusted Clone was obvious, but the boy made it clear he liked Axl even less. And from the way Tukten stared around him, nervously scanning the sky or peering ahead of him across the high plateau it was equally obvious the boy would rather be anywhere than where he was and doing anything except whatever it was he was doing.

  But it wasn’t until the three riders were far enough onto the bleak plateau for the swirling black specks in the grey sky ahead to be identifiable as vultures that Axl worked out that Tukten was terrified of the scavenging ground. Which explained all that tuneless whistling.

  A couple of hours was what it took Axl to reach that conclusion. A couple of hours during which his bladder grew tight as a drum, cold wind leached warmth from his face and the air got thinner and the vegetation ever more sparse, if that was possible. But still they rode a narrow track, in silence except for Axl’s abortive attempts to talk to the boy. It would have been easier to empathise with a stone.

  Empathising with the Clone wasn’t an option. Clones didn’t do empathy any more than they acknowledged blood ties. How could they, without getting landed with sending 3000 birthday vid-mails every month? And if you were a clone of a clone, what was the relationship to whoever held the ur-genetic template? Axl didn’t know ... He made a point of not watching the daytime newsfeeds.