SankhaGuide allowed her to access its civilian tracking data, highlighting two specific instances of lost contact inside the city. It gave her minimal legal information on the two individuals concerned, one Stuffie, one Unevolved, known to each other. Valkyrie looked at the human name: Dr. Gregory Saxton. He researched Unity Engine activity. Valkyrie knew nothing about Engines, except that they were what kept the Sidebars going.
Valkyrie grabbed that fact and hung on to it as her starting point. The lift paused on first, couldn’t take any more people on, and passed down to the ground. Valkyrie was last out. She pretended that she was not dawdling, not putting off the inevitable journey, the move forward into a world without Elinor.
Sankhara the city was notionally sited over Blackpool, on Lancashire’s coast where the west of England met the Irish Sea. The Gateway into its Sidebar was located on a slip road leading off the M62 west of the Manchester Vast. Valkyrie bought tickets for a high-speed air link to the north as she walked towards St. James’s Park in the weak sunshine of a London spring. She wanted to go back to the arsenal and lose herself in the minutiae of cleaning and repairing inanimate things where she felt, if not good, then safe. Instead she sent a message to the Master-At-Arms, informing him that her leave had been unexpectedly terminated.
The shrine of Uluru Metatron in this park was one of over thirty such places in the city, but it was Valkyrie’s favourite. It looked like a huge silver sphere, balanced delicately on the top of the grass as though it was lighter than a soap bubble and could take off at any second. Only a Forged human being would have the knowledge or the senses to detect where the ever-shifting doorways were. They were open portals behind convincing illusions of mirrored surfaces. Valkyrie watched her own reflection stride towards her until the moment she stepped through their light-built lies and into the Zen-quiet of the interior.
Inside the sphere lay a plain space, rather dark, with seats of varying sizes and types lining the walls. Standing areas were equipped with simple handrails and locator clamps. This sort of shrine offered security and safety for complete immersion in the Forged’s virtual universe, Uluru, and this one in particular was big enough that visitors need not feel obliged to greet one another. Valkyrie chose to stand and set her hand on a free bar, locking her exoskeleton in position so that she could use all her processing capacity to render the virtual world. There was an instant of vertigo as her inputs switched over from her physical body to digital signal, and then there was a different reality all about her.
The Skuld in this place was a grubby urchin child with ragged trousers and tangled hair. Freed from the bulk and limits of her armoured life as a Light Angel, Valkyrie wandered with artless curiosity among the familiar landmarks of her youth. She reverently ran her fingertips along the worn aluminium fuselage of Tom Corvax’s silver aeroplane as she passed its resting place. It was long abandoned: grass and daisies grew thickly around its wheels, and its tail was almost buried in the side of the hill. Valkyrie, and many other Forged, liked to stroke it and had incorporated it into their personal experience of Uluru much as they might hang a reproduction painting on their wall at home. To touch it was to touch a legend.
Metatron, the avatar of the twin AI systems who ran Uluru, showed his face in a reflection on the plane’s wing as she explored her favourite bulky line of handmade rivets.
“Hallo, Valkyrie, can I get you anyone?”
She thought she should do business first. “Is there anybody here who has personal experiences of Unity or of the Independence Occupation of Origin, Unity’s homeworld?”
“I will ask.” The face dimmed to indicate the departure of Metatron’s attention but brightened again almost immediately. There was never long to wait. “One comes who would speak anonymously.” Metatron inclined his noble, seraphic head and winked out of existence, job done.
Valkyrie looked around her and presently saw a black butterfly with red eye marks on the wings slowly fluttering towards her. It landed on the plane close by her hand, then expanded into an attractive golden gryphon and stretched out along the warm metal, tail tip twitching. Where most people broadcast on the emotional attunement bands in Uluru, this one gave off only the merest hint of itself, the bare minimum for politeness’ sake: a distant friendliness.
“What’s your interest?” it asked. It had a voice that was rich and musical, the kind of voice that would have been good for reading ghost stories late at night.
She showed her Security ID. “Official,” she said. “What’s your experience?”
“Unofficial,” it said. “I am a . . . researcher.”
“I’m—”
“I know who you are, and where you’re going, and what for,” the gryphon said, eyes almost closed as it looked askance. “I advise against it.”
Valkyrie was instantly suspicious—she was used to the machinations of the various agencies, their shifting agendas and their knowledge of one another’s business; it was routine, though she didn’t like to be so easily bested. She assumed this was someone from another team like hers, possibly Solar Securitat, though it reminded her of something or someone else. She was nagged by memories that stubbornly refused to materialize. “But . . .”
“Unity is unstable,” the gryphon said, one of its claws gouging a scratch across the metal wing of the plane as it flexed one of its eagle forefeet. “And things have got personal with it. If you must go, don’t get involved. But that’s rather like saying don’t go at all. So don’t go.” At the same time it emphasized its honesty over the affinity link.
Valkyrie backed off quickly—the weight of the gryphon’s conviction was so strong it threatened to overwhelm her receptors. She believed it before she had time to object. At the same time the peculiar emotions she could taste on the line between them unsettled her; they were so strong and powerfully felt, but they were complex and sophisticated—they verged on being a kind of thinking all of their own, a kind of superintuition.
It was rare to find someone capable of experiencing certainty as powerfully as this gryphon did. Her curiosity burned her terribly, but in Uluru you got what you got and asked no questions. It was the law, and permanent excommunication was the penalty for attempting to access beyond what was offered. Valkyrie had to take the gryphon’s statements at face value. “I have to go. Can’t you give me some advice that’s more useful? Anything? Because gnostic predictions aren’t enough to make me stop.”
“No, that’s all I can think of,” the gryphon said absently. “But I’d still appreciate it if you stayed out of things when you got there.”
“That would be easier if I had any idea who you were, or if you were as truthful as you seem.”
“So it would.” The gryphon yawned, curling its pointed pink tongue. “If you go, then you will certainly meet me there, and I will certainly have to stand in your way, should you choose to interfere. I must tell you that I will do so until one or other of us is ended.” It returned to being a butterfly and meandered off over the fuselage.
Valkyrie sighed, reached down near her bare foot, pulled up a daisy and twirled it. She pulled off the petals, counting,
“I’ll see her, I’ll see her not . . .”
It ended on “not.” Probably for the best—AI prints degrade with visiting. She left the yellow daisy centre there on the silver wing, for Metatron, and opened her real eyes into the chilly shadow of the shrine.
Two Arboraforms, Park Attendants, were sitting out their break there, leaning against one another, lost in Uluru. Skuld wondered who could already be involved from the human world with a situation like this one in Sankhara. How could they know so much?
The only answer she could think of was one she didn’t like at all—they knew what they knew well before Metropolis was destroyed, either because they knew Theodore, or they knew the splinter.
Valkyrie didn’t bother going back home. There was nothing there she wanted. She made her way to the air terminus and caught the speed link, leaving it when they were high over t
he three cloud decks that blanketed Manchester in rain. She turned northwest and began her descent towards the Sankhara Gateway.
10 / Francine
I woke up and didn’t have a clue where I was for about ten seconds. The pink ceiling, white borders, dripping patterns of leaves and forests, the luxury . . . I had no idea. And then, I did.
I rolled over and saw the fire was down to hot white ash, with a few red embers glowing here and there. I was alone, and I ached from lying on the floor. The carpet was thick but I’d slept so deeply I had hardly moved. The room was bigger than I remembered and now that the curtains were drawn back it was lit by brilliant sunshine coming through huge windows. The deep pomegranate colour was so intense it almost hurt my brain.
I got up slowly, rubbing my sore shoulder, realizing I was still wearing my old clothes and the anorak I borrowed from Katy the day before. Above the fireplace was a mirror which I was just tall enough to see myself in. I looked appalling.
I didn’t remember exactly how I fell asleep. I did remember that he asked me to touch him, but he just lay there. He looked sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and he relaxed, kept looking at the fire. He put his hand on mine. A glowing heat ran over me. I lay down behind him, I put my arm around him. He held my hand against his chest. I felt his heart beat. That’s the last thing I remember.
But . . . where was he? Was it all a trick? Oh, now suddenly I thought of the Stuffies and all the rumours of what lay beyond the city confines . . . the rebirth of the oldest stories, the primeval lords of the universe, demons, beasts and all the lying, conjuring magical creatures of ages never. I started to look for the door, realizing then that I had no idea where I was, and neither did anyone else I knew.
I listened. It was quiet. I tiptoed to the door and opened it cautiously, slowly, and almost jumped back. There was a white pedestal in front of me, bearing a huge hand-tied bunch of baby pink roses. A note, propped against them, said, in perfectly scripted handwriting, Not This Way. Their scent was delicate and beautiful, nothing heady. I touched one and it was real.
The hall beyond was silent and empty. I turned back, peering closely around the furniture, glancing out of the windows. Everything was peaceful. Hope and terror fought for control of me. I walked to the other door, on the left of the fireplace. It wasn’t quite shut and swung open easily onto a dressing room or drawing room of some kind, ivory and gold. White petals were scattered at my feet in a trail that led across its dark hardwood floor and richly coloured rugs. It wound gently in a curve to another door, passing lengthy, luxurious sofas and tables covered with books and papers . . . huge amounts. I glanced at them, taking a few tentative steps: they were mostly novels and histories, biographies and old bound collections of comic strips.
Beyond any ability to stop, I followed the white roses.
They led into a white marble bathroom, across the floor, over a stack of perfectly folded white towels, over a chair with a set of clean clothing on it, over a pair of silk slippers, over a white mat and over the edge of a tubful of water where they lay scattered among bubbles that covered the whole surface. Steam rising had wilted them, but they were still fresh.
“Hello?” I whispered and turned to see the door close softly at my back. The lock was on my side. I stood there in my horrible old clothes and realized I smelled of barracks living and cleaning compounds. I hadn’t had a bathroom to myself in months—only quick showers snatched in the few allotted minutes of privacy allowed by the Foundation’s schedule.
I didn’t believe this was for me. Or if it was, the prelude to something . . .
Beside the bath was a stand holding a broad glass dish of toiletries. All the best, labels I’d never even seen before, not for real. The bath itself smelled heavenly. I went back and locked the door. The grip turned easily in my hands. I tested it. Solid.
It took me a long time to work up the courage to get in the bath. I put my clothes as close to it as I could. I had to work very hard at my fears. My heart was thudding so fast, so full of hope and excitement that there wasn’t room for much else. I wanted it to be for me.
Of course, all this stuff was for idiots. If Damien were here, he’d tell me all about it in an instant.
The water covered me to my chin and I stayed in until it got cold. After I got out I thought about getting back into my clothes . . . but put the new ones on. What good would a few bits of old cloth do me against . . . things? And the new ones were beautiful but plain, a white shirt, tough blue outdoor trousers, socks, shoes. Even the underwear was the right size, white, plain. No sacrificial robes or frills and fusses.
I opened the door and found an entirely new trail of peach-coloured rose petals. They led through another door and out onto a balcony with the most incredible view; it ran across formal gardens, down a huge grassy avenue, broad parks and forest, miles of forests rising to white-capped mountains beyond. The sky blazed and the sun shone, making the cool air pleasant, but I only noticed these things tangentially. He was leaning against the balcony rail, watching me, the petals leading all the way to his feet. He still had a rose stem in his hand and was dropping the last of the flower head onto the ground. As I met his glance he grinned and tossed it over his shoulder, biting his lip as though I’d caught him doing something naughty.
“Damn, I thought I’d be quicker than that,” he said. “Water not too hot? Should I have led you to your chair instead? I used to know about this. It’s been a long time.”
I followed the trail to its end. At close range he was so intoxicating I actually got dizzy and had to put out my hand. It came in contact with his shoulder. He glanced down at it and I felt him breathe in sharply. I whispered, “Are you going to eat me?”
“Only if you ask nicely,” he said, looked into my eyes and winked at me. “Ah, who am I kidding? If you ask at all. But I’m like the vampires that way. I only do requests. So, be careful what you do with your mouth.” His expression became unmistakably lustful but friendly at the same time. His gaze dropped to my lips and lingered there and his own lips parted slightly.
I felt my face turn as hot as the sun.
He looked back up, smiled and took hold of my shoulders, turned me around and sat me down at the table. “Eat something. You must be starving. I didn’t even feed you yesterday.”
I looked blankly at all the food laid out before me, champagne on ice, orange juice, sushi, fruit, bread, pastry . . . there was nothing left out. Flowers and branches covered in fresh berries tumbled in skeins of excess through it all, almost too much, but not quite. I didn’t feel the slightest hunger. My stomach was locked with excitement. I looked at him as he sat down close to me. He pulled a cherry off one of the branches, reached across and put it against my mouth. I took it and his fingers just brushed my lips. I bit it and the hot, sweet explosion of juice was a shock but then suddenly his mouth was on mine in a kiss that sealed it in.
He leant back and smiled at me. “Bet you can’t spit over the railing from here.”
I chewed carefully around the pit and lined it up with my tongue, took a breath and . . .
“Wrong again,” he said and shrugged as the pit vanished over the drop. He laughed self-consciously and held his hand out. “Want to see the rest of the place?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t think I could take any more strangeness. I wanted to stay there, potentially forever.
“Okay.” I knew nothing about him. It didn’t matter. All my sense screamed at me that being here was a complete mistake, only a moron could fall for this stuff, and at the same time I was happy and every time he did anything it was just the right thing, for me, at that moment. I fell out of love with sense. I watched him move and sometimes even listened to what he was saying. I didn’t notice myself eating, and he didn’t much, but somehow the table’s feast diminished and the sun swung around and it grew too cool to stay outside.
I told him my story.
He told me what he was. He explained how he hid. He said he couldn’t prove any of it.
>
“You’re a Stuffie.” I shrugged. “I’m a Genie. Who cares?”
“You do,” he said with a discomforting direct gaze.
I shrugged. “Don’t.”
“You identified yourself as a thing. You care about it. A lot. You hate it. You’re furious about it.”
“And you’re not?”
“Oh, I am. Angry enough to flatten a city and then some . . . Never pretended otherwise.” He shrugged. “But at least I get to have an opponent I can point at—Unity, and Theo. For all the good it does. You, you’re mad and you can’t even bring yourself to identify who with.”
“I’m not. I can. I’m not angry.”
“Liar, liar,” he said quietly.
“All right then, I am angry and I do really . . . dislike . . . Darren, my mother’s partner. He’s . . .”
“N-uh uh. You’re not mad with him. The only way to stop is to face up to the real person you’re mad at.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault . . .”
“Nope. You’ve circled it, but you’re not calling it.”
“Well, if you know so much, you call it.”
“Who made you without asking?”
“My mother loves me.”
“Never said she didn’t. Where IS she by the way?”
“She’s back at home in . . . what has that got to do with it?”
“You ran because you were frightened about how angry you were with her. You didn’t know what to do about it and it was starting to leak out.”
“That’s stupid.”
“No. That’s actually quite self-sacrificing and noble and only a little bit stupid.”
I glared at him and got up. Unable to find a way to contradict him, I marched back into the building, through the hot pink room and the pedestal with the roses on it and the note . . . and into the hallway, and along towards the stairs and then I stopped, only then realizing the real size of the place I was in. The corridors ran for miles, the doors . . . I couldn’t count them. I caught my breath and ran down the stairs, only then realizing that of course I’d left Katy’s wretched anorak back in the bathroom and it was probably freezing outside because it was cold in here.
Living Next Door to the God of Love Page 11
