Authors: Colin Harvey
The third man said nothing but watched everything.
The next two hours were spent in painful debriefing, the memories still raw. Alberts was sympathetic but dogged. The others said nothing—it was clear who ran the show. Moorhouse opened her mouth to speak once and closed it at a look from Alberts. At times Karen wanted to scream at him, and he seemed to sense it. When she approached the boiling point, he would stop a particular line of questioning and start another. Karen had heard the law lost a brilliant cross-examiner when he'd entered politics. That morning he proved it.
Alberts asked one last question. “Where do your sympathies lie?"
She weighed her answer. They were scanning her, checking every word against the telltale responses of her body. “I'm bi-sexual. But I disapprove of violence or any form of coercion, from either side. And I'm married to a man who, if you knew him, you'd know would explain my life better than anything else I could say would. Now I have a question."
"Of course.” Alberts tilted his head slightly.
"Is it a criminal offence yet to be homosexual, or are you saving that for a rainy day?"
His smile was a tacit admission. “Touché. It's not illegal. What concerns us more is what those beliefs may lead to.” He waited for a moment, looked at his colleagues, back to Karen, then continued gently, “Thank you for your honesty. You have my sincerest condolences, Ms. Davis-Kosigin. You've lost a friend and been turned into an unwitting tool for extremists to attack a woman who deserved better, whatever our disagreements with her. We have no truck with these gangland tactics."
"You would say that, wouldn't you?” Karen replied.
"Yes, I would say that,” he said. “In this case I mean it. The perpetrator of this outrage has disappeared, probably into the Loyalist camps. We had to be completely sure of your part in this attack on Red May. Certainly it seems to be borne out by other information we have."
He refused to elaborate further, instead dropped a bombshell. “Parti Homo has agreed to peace talks. It's a surprise because they're doing well locally at the moment, and those with the momentum are rarely willing to lose it. Even more surprising is that one of their conditions is that you attend as one of the Government Delegation. They've guaranteed your safety. We're completely bemused but left with few options.” He turned to Moorhouse.
She smiled without warmth. “We've had to suspend you for the last few days but will reinstate you after this meeting."
"Rest for a few days, Karen,” Alberts concluded. “A limo will take you home. We'll be in touch."
Home. Sergei wasn't there, and when at last he came home, her woolly bear looked at Karen as if she was an alien. When she reached out to hug him, he drew away as if she would bite.
"I'm still me, whatever Michael said,” she said gently.
"But who is ‘me', Karen? The woman I thought or the woman I really did marry?” His voice was bitter. “Why did you, never tell me?"
"When I met you, I was celibate,” Karen said. “And when we met, your sex was irrelevant. I fell in love with a person Sergei, not a label. Everything changed when I met you."
"Really?” His disbelief was clear.
"Is your love for me so fragile that finding out that I liked girls as much as boys won't survive it?"
"But that's not it, is it?” he said. “It isn't that you used to like girls. You still do."
"I'm still attracted to women,” Karen admitted. “But I no more act on that attraction than you chase women."
"Really?” he asked bitterly. Karen could tell he didn't believe her. “Michael told me everything about you and Linda. What you got up to."
Karen felt sick. He was no better than the rest when it came to it. “So you choose to believe Michael, rather than me?” Her voice started to rise. “A monster who would make me kill my own grandmother because of who she is? Who would slander his own wife to justify what he did?"
Sergei turned away, and the bedroom door slammed shut. Karen knew then she'd lost him, maybe for good. He'd wanted to get away from the conflict for years, and this was the pretext he'd needed—whether or not he believed her or worried about her orientation was irrelevant. It was just an excuse. He left carrying a suitcase, without saying goodbye. In the bedroom, there was a note from him: He needed a few days to think. Pressing one of his shirts to her face, Karen doubted he'd return. There was an emptiness at her core. She'd rejoined the ranks of the hollow people. For some reason, it was almost a relief.
She spent a sleepless night, wondering if he was right, what she could have done differently. Days passed with her a solitary prisoner in the cell of her own home. Finally the phone rang. It was Moorhouse, inviting her to the conference.
Karen then made a call herself. “I'll do it,” she said, then added, “Sixty-four point three-three-seven kilos."
The room was in turmoil. The delegates realised there was significance in her testimony but were unsure in the hubbub precisely what it was. Someone called, “Can you rewind that?"
She looked puzzled, and as she stopped the wrisp, she checked the time, then surreptitiously palmed the second tablet as instructed. This was the trigger, to detonate the explosive when the parts connected. She was deliberately clumsy as she tried to reset the wrisp, and as a man barged into her to reset it for her, she doubled up. The buzz of concern grew louder.
Karen felt stabs of pain as the nanodes flocked to the signal she had swallowed, carrying their deadly payload, dancing their deadly minuet.
On the signal, the nanodes released from the first pill tracked and gathered the scattered plutonium which was too small to measure when dispersed, then hurtled toward the beacon. The second pill also contained nanodes, a magnitude smaller than the others, designed to gather their own harvest; these rebuilt her, neutron by neutron, turning her into something very different from that which had entered the room. Technology so arcane, its very existence seemed magical. The resultant mix would magnify the effect of the plutonium by a magnitude.
In the other conference room, the Parti Homo delegation felt the same pain she did but at slightly different intervals. Working back from a microcalculated endpoint, everything was calculated to the millisecond. Their differing body masses meant the delegates had to swallow their tablets at different times, so the climax would be reached simultaneously.
The inferno will leave no forensic evidence other than the explosion started in the Hetero room; rumour will do the rest, and gays worldwide will be incensed at Red May's death—if the plan works.
Oh Sergei, she thinks, almost fainting from the pain. Oh Gramma. Her blood is boiling now, turning microgram by microgram into a toxic cocktail. At least the pain fills the void. The buzz grows louder, a million droning bees, and Gramma, Sergei, Michael, Linda, Marta, none of them matter anymore, as her hollowness is filled, and as she topples, she spontaneously combusts. Falling forward, the blazing body shimmers, and the people in the room are consumed in a flash of fire. Her transformation triggers a cascade of the Parti Homo delegates, and the castle itself is consumed by the miniature sun that engulfs everything for kilometres around and rises high in a spiralling column of fire above the city.
The spellhound left now-time bare fractions of a second before the spell bloomed, and its last sight of this time was an eyeball-melting flash of light running toward it silently, ahead of the wall of sound.
It resumed the flight backwards.
The detritus were happy to trade with the occasional visitor who breached the isolation of the canyons.
When they'd sold a child, they quickly got on with their lives. They couldn't bring these children back, they told themselves in the still, small hours of the night, when their sleep was uneasy and doubts gnawed at them.
Those who were sold never came back to visit. Most of them were unable to return, even if they'd wanted to. For those exiles, climbing to the status of mere paupers was only possible to a very lucky few.
Most, however, were chattels, possessions of their new owners, for whom pain was their first acquaintance, and for some, death the second. Domestic servitude was the kindest fate that awaited them, but those were a tiny minority. Many were sex slaves—the unlucky became playthings for the cruel or psychotic. The unluckiest became experimental subjects for dabblers in magic who insisted they HAD to have live human subjects. The Gods of Science and Pleasure had an insatiable appetite for life.
The City of Light and the other metropoli and arcologies shone brighter than any cities ever had before, so the shadows they cast were longer and deeper and the darkness in them absolute.
Back amongst the detritus, they knew nothing of this. Life was plentiful, and life was cheap. However, experience had taught the canyon dwellers to keep sentries posted. They were rarely caught unawares, but the lessons had been harsh. If the visitor was alone and there was no sign of creeping accomplices lurking in the shadows, they would trade. If not, they hid. Sometimes the small groups who came wanted to trade as well.
The detritus had learnt the bigger the group, the more chance that they wanted sport rather than trade. The detritus were just the latest set of victims, dating back to the African savannah of prehistory. Vikings, Corsairs, and the Jolanthi Hetmen ridding the Outer Planets of unbelievers provided an unbroken chain from prehistory to the sun-battered canyons where the detritus cowered from whooping young men on air-bikes, intent on killing, maiming, and raping.
So they watched for groups of men. They had one harsher lesson to learn: Sometimes it only takes one man to kill.
In the dark days of January, only locals walked beneath grey skies by the beach. Winter was their season. Summer was an interruption to be endured until autumn brought relief from the heat and hordes of tourists. Gales blasted the English Channel, and breakers crashed onto the seawall separating beach from harbour, drenching the foolish who ventured too close. Seagulls hovered above the spray, their shrieks competing with the saurian honk of the Cherbourg ferry.
Narrow-wooded chines ran from the beach to the cliffs where the town perched. Beach huts huddled in the shadows, sheltering gangs of restless, hormone-driven teenagers for whom vandalism, theft, casual sex, and brutality to the weak were a way of life. Every year they set huts alight, sometimes by accident, usually deliberately.
Buzzy's gang was no exception. They were a little better than the worst of the gangs but only a little, nasty in a small, petty sort of way. There was Buzzy and five others: Doggy, Joe, and Tanya—together with Buzzy, all fifteen, nearing sixteen. Rebecca, a year younger, and Adam, a year younger again.
Buzzy was thin and scrawny, with a trace of hair on his upper lip. To the rest of the gang, he was The Man. He nominally lived in the rough estate at the West End of town but was rarely at home, and his parents showed little interest in him when he was.
Doggy was big and slow, his face a red mass of zits, a necessary first lieutenant for Buzzy, who needed Doggy's brawn more than he cared to admit.
Joe was the real brains of the gang, but he tried to hide it. Buzzy didn't like rivals, real or imagined. Joe's calmness irritated Buzzy, who regularly tried to provoke him. Joe kept his temper and told himself his time would come. This was his apprenticeship, he reminded himself. He was also useful because his brother sometimes loaned them an ancient Ford Escort to drive and knew most of the local dealers.
Tanya, nominally Buzzy's girlfriend, was nearly six feet tall, towering three inches above Buzzy, and seven above fair little Rebecca. Quiet, shy Rebecca, who admitted one stoned evening that her tastes ran in other directions. When she'd elaborated, Tanya had felt quite ill.
Some nights when she was tanked up, Tanya would help hold Rebecca down while one of the others took her. Sometimes her hand strayed over a taut nipple. Once she slid a finger in as the boy entered Rebecca and heard her gasp. Sometimes it was Tanya who was held down, when Buzzy decided she needed ‘discipline'.
Being Buzzy's girlfriend brought Tanya little pleasure. She tolerated him because of tribal politics rather than affection.
Sweet little Adam was the one she really liked. Buzzy said to Adam, “You're only in the gang ‘cause your olders have so much money, they won't notice some going to a good cause.” If Adam's parents did notice their cash disappearing, they said nothing to their delinquent child.
Buzzy's cruelty usually ran to cats or stray dogs, and also to any lone pensioner who looked ripe for mugging. If he had no other distractions, he would turn on one of the gang.
One night they were down by the beach huts near the sea, and Adam's posh accent annoyed Buzzy more than ever. They'd run out of money, and he blamed Adam. Some ritual humiliation was necessary, so he had Tanya hold Adam down on the bench by a nearby phone box.
Tanya enjoyed that. She was more than six inches taller than Adam, who was good-looking but a runt. She was plain but well built, and the way he watched her when he thought she wasn't looking gave her a buzz. Perhaps Buzzy had noticed it and that fuelled his anger toward Adam. Unfortunately Adam's struggles were arousing her.
Without thinking, she sat astride him and rubbed against him. She slid a hand into his pants before Buzzy pulled her off, slapping her.
"You slag!” Buzzy screamed. He shouted at Doggy, and they grabbed an arm each, ramming Adam's head into the phone box, glass shattering, counterpointing Tanya's mood. She looked away as Buzzy tore the phone from its socket and beat Adam around the head with it, blood sprinkling the broken glass on the ground.
She walked away, ignoring Adam's screams, secretly relieved when they faded to whimpers. It was a Friday night. It would be Monday before the phone would be repaired.