Lila considered this and then leaned down to the stump, her hands tightening on the handlebars as she revved the power and selected first gear. ‘Get off my land.’ She stayed there, watching as the stump slid with the same motionless ease along the hedge line and finally through the hedge itself until it was on the pavement side. Then, with a backward glance at the house and a hollowing of her cheeks as she thought of Max’s safety, she sped away.
CHAPTER NINE
Lila planned to go directly home, but the screamers attached to half the messages coming out of her office were so insistent that guilt, or possibly rage masquerading briefly as guilt, took her over and turned her wheels that way. She persuaded herself the detour would be nothing more than a necessary pitstop although she only partly fooled herself. She was spoiling for a fight and it was better that impulse got some outlet here than at home. What was between her and Zal felt precarious; too much had happened too fast. But it was also precious – exactly how precious she didn’t like to admit because it caused a fluttery, desperate feeling to rise in her chest – so she wasn’t about to have a fight with him.
Inside the place was like a press room. For all the speed and ease of the communications technology that everyone had, there was nothing like really getting in someone’s face to get yourself some attention, and everyone wanted attention, immediately. The corridors and rooms thrummed with activity and energy. Even her costume couldn’t command much more than a second glance as Lila eased her way through gaggles of suited agents and their hundreds of milling contacts en route to Greer’s office.
Bentley was at the door waiting for her by the time she made it, her smooth grey hand flat to the glass pane through which Lila could see Temple Greer hunched in his ergonomic chair in a cramped, troll-like pose. One arm was braced across his midriff to support his other elbow as that hand rubbed the stubble on his chin in a vexed manner. A uniformed police officer and a civilian agent were standing with him, both talking earnestly at great speed.
‘Best wait,’ Bentley said, easing back now that her mission was accomplished.
Lila made a disappointed noise. ‘Do you think they’ll be long?’
‘How long is a piece of string?’ Bentley replied, making a tiny gesture with her chin at the open-plan areas behind Lila’s back. ‘It’s been like this all afternoon.’
Lila turned back from her second viewing of the chaos, a frown on her face, and saw Bentley’s mildly amused smile. ‘The diner.’
‘The diner. You may assume nobody is bothering you because they have been ordered not to.’ She pointed over her shoulder through the glass door, indicating that Greer had been the author of that command. ‘I don’t think he threatened them with death, but something about pay cuts was mentioned. On a similar note you can guarantee that all conversation out here is being severely earwigged.’
Lila switched into machine-only mode, their spoken words translated directly into coded digits. ‘What’s Xavi been doing all day?’
‘Sleeping mostly. She was piqued when she couldn’t go out but she’s gone back to poring over those ancient tomes you gave her, drawing, making notes, pacing up and down, attempting the odd bit of strangeness I can only take for spell-casting though nothing happens.’
‘Sure?’
‘If her face is anything to go by, I’m sure.’
‘And she doesn’t know about Sarasilien?’
‘If she does she hasn’t heard it here. I don’t like to vouch for supernaturals though. Haven’t got access to the same methods so I can’t say for certain. You know.’
Lila did know, and signalled as much. She expected that Xavi would try to break containment, and that she would succeed. The only uncertainty was when that would happen. She’d have given a lot to know the exact time on that particular clock. It made it all the more important to resolve her outstanding issues with Sarasilien right away, even if that meant dealing with the Lane clone.
Lila found herself grinding her teeth and had to work for a few moments to stop.
‘You can AI-govern your chemistry so you don’t get all that,’ Bentley said, appending a vast and extensive catalogue of human responses to illustrate what she meant by ‘all that’. ‘You can have this instead.’ She showed Lila a handsome bar chart featuring the entire rainbow, every emotion and response calibrated and displayed to twenty decimal places.
Lila, who had switched that feature off so many times she couldn’t count it, nodded her thanks. ‘I like my inadequate human reactions the hard way. Keeps it real.’
‘ “To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life” ’. Bentley said.
Lila mused on it a moment. ‘I love Oscar Wilde. But I was never sure if he meant you should become a spectator, so you don’t suffer, or you shouldn’t, because then you’ve missed out on something vital to the human experience.’
‘I am certain it is the former.’
‘And I’m sure it’s not,’ Lila sighed and leaned against the low divider full of plants that screened the main office from all the negative chi streaming its way across the open zone. ‘Though better for him if it were. Isn’t that the enlightened position, to treat your life from the distance of an eternal perspective?’
Bentley laughed in silent zeroes. ‘I guess it is. The machine makes it much easier than I remember it being before though.’
Lila stared through the glass, watching Greer argue forcefully in his own special silent movie. ‘Will we get old and die?’
The grey android shrugged slowly. ‘The machine has kept me in perfect restoration. So far.’
Lila spent a moment or two deliberately listening to the susurrus of the machine whispers that continued eternally throughout her body, the soft promises of for ever from the Signal. She didn’t feel convinced that it was a personal promise. She might not last for ever, though it would. It might not be conscious except through beings like herself and Bentley, but that didn’t mean much, although she took some comfort in the fact that her screw ups weren’t going to be global mishaps, just like Zal said. (Oh, Zal, how neglected he was! A burst of guilt and longing flared hot across her skin.) And yet her entire existence felt like it had been engineered to be pivotal. Why else bother? Super agents were rare. All-powerful ones, much more rare. Which left only the question – would she jump or would she be pushed? Greer suddenly caught sight of her in the middle of his rant and paused for a full second, halfway through the word ‘and’, causing the two policemen to turn and look as well. He finished his line as he stood up and they gave way before him as he shouldered past them to wave at the door. It opened and, with misgiving and curious looks, the officers reluctantly let themselves be waved out as she was ushered in. The glass walls turned themselves an opaque white at their backs so nobody could see inside any more.
‘Black,’ he grated. ‘Nice of you to show up.’ The sarcasm was made all the more effective by his overused voice growling like a bear’s. His eyes raked across her, taking in Tatters’ display of gory justice with frowning disapproval. ‘I can see the headlines already . . . because here they bloody well are.’ He flicked out his hand and the walls obediently filled with the text news as delivered on the Otopia Tree’s fastnet.
It was pure hallmark drama to which Lila didn’t respond, having already dismissed the hysteria as uninteresting the second it came zipping along into her AI’s inbox, and thence into the junk file and instant deletion. To humour him she looked across the largest type-faces where they stamped themselves across his potted palms and sofas and read them aloud.
‘ “Red-headed Knight Templar Saves Diners From Fate Worse Than Undeath.” ’
Greer was glaring at her. ‘And yes, I did see the Hot Nun one, before you ask.’
‘ “Cuffs leader with own gun,” ’ Lila said and then turned to face him. ‘See, no killing. Superman-clean action.’
‘And this one?’
The lettering changed and she obediently turned to read, managing not to hesitate.
/>
‘ “Inhuman droid agent chops up dead-butchers, twenty-eight arrested.” I hope you penalise inaccuracy,’ Lila said, surprised by the jolt she felt at reading it. A hot burn of injustice boiled quickly up from her belly into her face so that it was hard work to maintain the lightness of step that dancing with Greer required. She knew what the problem was from his perspective – it was the D word. Otopia had never revealed the existence of its few cyborg creations to the public: it was a subject relegated to the pages of conspiracy blogs. This headline had come from one of the most prominent of these.
Temple Greer, dishevelled even in an expensive, pressed suit, black hair flopping on his forehead, moustache bold, went through ten kinds of calculating behind his fixed stare. Lila supposed it would have unnerved her if she were younger.
‘What I don’t like about right now is that it’s a god-awful untidy mess,’ he said. ‘Agencies leaking all over each other. Strangers treading my carpets, whining. Boss on my back, stamping feet. Dangerous creatures everywhere, and most of them in this goddamned building where I have to hide them, protecting them from execution whilst I wait for them to break my security, escape and cause even more hell. Meanwhile you, pageant queen, are out eating burgers and getting involved in publicity stunts from which you dash off like Cinderella leaving nary a shoe behind.’
Lila’s chin had gone down several notches during this mini lecture and now she regarded him steadily. ‘And how you love it,’ she folded her arms.
His gaze became gelid for an instant. ‘If you had killed them you would have looked like a normal agent at least.’
‘Pathetic,’ she said. ‘If that’s the best you can do I’ve got betraying bastards coming out of my ears back in my own office, not to mention their back-chatting, grudge-holding, bitch-clone sidekicks and a monster in the vault pretending to be a cute little goth girl who never done no wrong ’cept to ease the pain in her sweet, tiny emo heart. Do you think some headlines from a few humans is going to make a dent in that?’
Greer broke his righteous stance with a sigh and raked a hand through his hair as he walked restlessly across the few paces between himself and the sofa. He threw himself down into it and lay there, as if poleaxed. ‘You think Xavi is a fraud too?’
‘I don’t know what I think about her,’ Lila said honestly. ‘Mostly I don’t think about her.’
‘She gives me the creeps.’
‘Zal gives you the creeps.’
‘Yes, but in a wholesome, rock and roll kind of way. I’m making her Malachi’s special responsibility, not yours. I think you should stay away from her.’
Lila was so used to his non sequiturs that they made sense to her now. She let this pass without comment. ‘What about dead duty?’
‘They can patrol together.’
‘Did you have a feeling about this or something?’
‘No,’ he said with a rising groan of reluctance that let her know he was about to admit something that he hated to tell. ‘A hexxing doll we seized during a raid on a demon nest down in Palm Beach said you had to stay away from her.’
‘Say what?’ Lila frowned.
Greer flung an arm across his eyes, playing even more the fainting dandy although she wasn’t sure the exhaustion part was much of a joke. ‘A doll. One of those voodoo things the faeries and demons make. They had one. When we broke in they were busy destroying it – it had finished whatever work it was supposed to be doing.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Faery dust, smuggling information, nothing to worry about. Not my point. Point is: we get in, they get arrested, the doll’s on the table sitting on the drugs, falling to bits and we’re in the middle of leaving when—’
‘Why are you there?’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Have to personally oversee all supernatural arrests. Black, stop interrupting me with stupid questions. Point is, doll sits up and speaks to me. Tells me some blessed rubbish about a thing called an assemblage point in the future at which you, a shadow and the angel of death make a very unfortunate combination promising untimely demise for all if you deviate from something it called the path of the heart. I don’t have such a good memory for these things but that did rather burn into the synapses. A message. From . . . I don’t know who it was from.’ His look at her said he knew only too well and they were not going to mention the name, ever, because pulling its attention was the last thing anyone wanted. The Hoodoo.
Greer sniffed and rubbed his moustache violently. ‘I thought only the maker of the doll could order it to do anything. Demon that made the doll didn’t like it much either. Freaked out. Broke the arresting officer’s arm, ripped its own hand off making an escape. And now there we are, stuck with this hand: should we keep it on ice in case it returns for it or should we just burn it? You’re the expert, what’s the etiquette on this kind of thing?’
‘Serve it with a side salad,’ Lila said, all her attention on reprocessing the important part of his speech. ‘Angel of death?’ she wanted to be sure.
‘Xaviendra, it said. I was extemporising.’
For a doll to be speaking without a making was indeed unheard of, but the cause seemed reasonably clear to her. Beings like the Hoodoo needed a vehicle. She remembered the ugly faery at her garden gate, devoting some time to delivering the same message, although with different details. No mention of Xavi in that one but still a vague promise of End Times and her love of horror stories was long gone.
She set the information to the back of her mind to compile itself into sense. ‘Is Malachi in?’
‘As in as he ever is,’ Greer said, feigning a state somewhere close to his last breath. ‘You kids, you’ll be the death of me.’
Lila smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t help thinking of Zal at times like this, because Greer’s humour was just like his, and Greer had learned it off Zal’s albums and escapades in the way-back-when, six months or sixty years ago. ‘What did Sarasilien say to you?’
‘Well he didn’t mention anything about a time machine or a dimensional polarity shift if that’s what you mean.’
‘No explanations of his lost years?’
‘Nothing. Just wants to see you. Prepared to wait apparently, although it’s only been a few hours. I think you could easily let him stew for several weeks, see what pops out of him in the meantime. Unless the end of the world is tomorrow. But no. I’m sure he would’ve mentioned it. Actually, he seemed very sad to me, down about something, like his dog died.’
‘And you didn’t mention Xavi.’
‘Hello? Head of the Secret Service here, not eager-beaver placement student.’ He huffed and put both hands to his face to rub his eyes in a gesture that looked as though he might rub them out entirely. It looked painful. ‘He isn’t really an elf is he?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lila said. Her prospects for getting out of the place anytime soon were beginning to look dangerously slim. Queue notifications, red alarms, message streams were popping up in her AI like fireworks on Chinese New Year. She knew that Greer had an implant not unlike hers and that his inbox could only be much worse. ‘Seriously, are you okay?’
There was a pause. She thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he said glumly, ‘The ex-Mrs Greer has a gentleman caller. He didn’t take too kindly to my serenading her at four o’clock in the morning with a rousing march on the bagpipes.’
‘Don’t you ever sleep?’
‘Only at Christmas and birthdays.’ He lifted his ragged, lengthening hair and showed her his ear, which had a narrow cut across it and a medium-sized bruise beside it on his cheek, mostly hidden by his sideburns. ‘Cat’s dish. He throws like a girl.’
Lila nodded, as ever unsure what to say to this. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I, Blackie, so am I. You won’t forget to phone me and tell me what’s going on if you find out, will you? I know how distracting black ops elves in spandex can be to you young girls.’
‘No, sir.’
He turned at this and looked at her, a p
ained expression on his large, rugged features, making him look like an alarmed basset hound. ‘Sir? What’s this? Has that Bentley woman been talking to you? Sir. I’m not a goddamned policeman. Sir. Sir!’
‘Sorry.’
He made a grumbling sound and slowly, painfully, sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘Get lost, would you. Oh, and congratulations on the new house. Etcetera.’
‘Thanks.’
This time his grumbled response was more of a grunt, accompanied by a vigorous attempt at a soapless shampoo. Lila fought an inclination to go and kiss him as if he were some lovely grumpy uncle, because even though that was the effect he was going for she wasn’t buying it and this last ordinary step of their defensive dance took her breath away as its turns revealed their common pain.
She took a few steps backward before turning on her heel and leaving via the already open door. Her throat hurt her and she shook her head crossly, almost hitting Bentley who was standing, rock steady and rock patient, just where she’d left her.
They flashed machine messages at each other, verifying and exchanging news not important enough to put into words. A burst of rapport strings finished the moment, one misplaced digit in a key position sounding their common bum note about Sandra Lane.
Anxiety ticked in Lila’s mind, repeating the suspicion that Lane had gone and evolved when nobody was looking, and now had a capacity they couldn’t detect that was going to get them. She knew things like that were possible. It was in the Signal’s whisper.
She had to fight the paranoia that wanted to gallop away with her. Now was not the moment. Now was so not the moment.
She passed the queues of people outside doors, the huddles at corners, the quickly sidestepping aides with nods of recognition, watching the surprise on their faces as their AIs and links updated each one of them personally with her replies to their enquiries. She created links and groupfeeds on the run, forming new collaboration teams, which she couldn’t personally oversee, designating chair-people and delegating her authority, notifying them that her AI would be acting for her, a subself, never sleeping, never tiring as it passed only the important news to her waking mind.
Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five Page 17
