3 SUM (18 page)

I looked across the water and noticed something was missing, pulled down with no sign it ever existed.

“I was wondering when you would notice,” said Anais.

Tilda's Boat House had gone, and the token finally dropped. “You followed me that night,” I said.

“Keep your voice down, but of course. And with Dorian too, didn't think you'd come out alive.”

“Whatever happened to Lartley 87 and Coussan 6?” I asked. I was reminiscing more than anything, those two blockheads meant nothing to me.

“The same fate that all MAD men face sooner or later.”

“They're dead?”

“Let's say reassigned.”

“Like Cordelia 615.”

“You know her?”

“Sure, I saved her life when she was the caretaker at Rinse Gardens.”

“Thank you, Mother Nature.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You just found us some leverage.”

Anais' escorts weren't just protecting her; they were watching us. We were seated outside in a small piazza, under an umbrella to keep the sun out of our eyes. The guards stood a few feet away, at the railings.

“Tell me, why are you risking your life for me?” I asked her.

“I'm in love.”

“Really?”

“No, I'm a wanted woman. Actually, I'd be risking my life if I didn't see you. Vespertina will kill me unless she's permanently retired, and for that I need the disc. You still have it?”

“Am I Valiant 01 or not?” I replied, tapping my handbag.

I was wondering how to get Cordelia's attention and remind her of our shared history. There was no need.

“Sorry, Valery 01, I never got the chance to repay you,” she whispered as she lowered the bread rolls next to our vegetable soup.

“Never say never,” I said.

“This is all rather touching,” said Anais to her guards as they each pulled up a chair to our table, “but would you mind sitting over there?”

She pointed at another table. They looked at each other.

“Oh for goodness sake, we're only sitting here,” she said. She could have said she was only under house arrest with no charges pressed.

Cordelia looked at me, and I winked. They sat at the other table, but if she thought this was payback for saving her life, she had a surprise coming.

“How did you do it?” asked Anais.

“I never stopped being an experiment, not for Professor Altruist Huxley.”

“The dead surgeon?”

“That's the guy. He stitched the memory cells under my tongue. I just ate a plate of beef, and here I am.”

“You do know that dress looks ridiculous on you,” she said.

“You don't have to remind me.”

“I have a problem,” she said, finishing her soup and casually looking at our shemale escort.

“I'd be surprised if you didn't.”

“Vespertina knows I know, and wants me dead.”

“So why aren't you?”

“The Council has me under their arrest and protection, before they decide what to do with me.”

“They know about Vespertina's plan?”

“Two suspect, but they can't move without proof. It would start a civil war: shemale against tranny, crossdresser against cross dresser, transgender against ...”

“I get the idea; we need to get out of here.”

“There's the little matter of my guards.”

“Ask Cordelia to join us for the main course.”

She agreed, and it was a rather splendid lunch. Cordelia returned to her partner, Felicity. She was new to the game.

“Are you comfortable with all your equipment?” asked Cordelia.

“Are you coming onto me?” asked Felicity.

“Not on duty; I'm a professional.”

“In that case, no.”

“You know the most difficult thing?”

“Pulling a gun, handcuffing a suspect, and all the time keeping your hair looking gorgeous.”

Felicity laughed, “Tell me about it.”

“I can do better than that, I can show you.”

Five minutes later they were both handcuffed to the table, as I calmly walked Anais out of the restaurant.

“Shouldn't we shout for help?” asked Felicity.

“And look incompetent? No, trust me, we'll come up with a better story.”

“So what's the plan, handsome?” asked Anais.

We were off the main thoroughfares. I'd ditched the wig and heels, and Anais had ripped the pips from her shoulders. I gave her my handbag so no one would suspect she was a woman.

“I have the key to Professor Huxley's house; it's by the woods.”

“So what are we doing here? And, Valiant, let's hope it's not a trap.”

“It's still unoccupied,” I said.

I'd gone in first, alone. I'd told Anais to run if I didn't return in ten minutes, though I suspected she wouldn't. The house was wood and glass, on stilts, with grass on the roof. It sat alone.

Anais poked her nose around the corner of the next room. There was a skeleton dressed as a woman, holding a revolver.

“Are you loaded too?” she asked, checking the barrel.

I smiled and we both looked at the bed.

Not so long ago, I would have considered matching pillows and duvets stuffed with soft eiderdown. Now all I could think about was stuffing Colonel Anais, and I could tell she was in no mood to object.

“I've missed you,” she said as her uniform fell to the floor.

“I've missed me too,” I said, closing the curtains.

Anais was in the kitchen making us both something to eat. I checked out the professor's wardrobe. One half was women's clothing, the other half men's, Undiagnosed men. He really was mixed up.

I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind as she toasted our muffins.

“We have the film, but there's something else I want.”

“Again? Valiant, you've worn me out, honestly.”

“Not that. I mean my old buddy Steve 873.”

“He's locked up.”

“So was I.”

“It's dangerous.”

“And getting the film to the Council under Vespertina's nose isn't? He might come in handy.”

“A tranny, useful?”

She'd read my file.

“Not too long ago I was Valery 01, remember?”

“OK, let's give it a shot. He's your friend after all. Or have you got another surprise for me?”

We looked over our shoulders, fugitives on the run again. I'd turned the key but Claire could turn us in.

Anais drove Huxley's van. Turned out he was a magpie and the back was full of misappropriated teaching and surgical items from Dame University.

Chapter Thirty-Six

They were all tied up in the farmhouse, but not with work. A squad of elite shemales had infiltrated behind enemy lines.

“Last chance, Vadim, where's the film?” asked the leader.

“I keep telling you, I don't have it,” he said through his bloodied mouth. Like the rest he was bound to a chair, hands tied behind his back.

“Shame,” said the shemale.

They'd had a good life, but always on the edge, now it was time to fall off.

“Torch it,” said the leader.

The flames from the farmhouse reached into the night sky, as the helicopter whisked the squad of killers back to safety.

As the flames got closer, Vadim, his aunt, and nephews were left in a state of terror and regret. Play with fire and get burnt.

As soon as the helicopter touched down, the head shemale was escorted to Vespertina's quarters.

“They didn't have it,” he stammered.

Vespertina threw her vodka glass at the wall. “Fools.”

“They're dead.”

“Of course they are, they would have been anyway. You do know Colonel Anais has escaped my attention?”

“I thought she was under guard.”

“Me too.”

“And those responsible?”

“Due for a holiday on the frontlines when I get around to it.”

“Any more orders, Surgeon General?”

“Yes, get some rest; you'll need it.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Their flowing white robes seemed to hover over the marble floor. The walls were panelled gold, the ceiling bulletproof glass. In the centre was the eternal fire, whose life was married to the Femocracy. Alba, the eldest of the six Council members, opened the box of once worn bras and added more fuel to the sacred flames. The garments were pre-revolution, before women chose apparel for themselves and not their keepers. But a society that throws away its bras will one day throw away its men.

They danced in their sandals around the flames, hand in hand. Alba would soon leave, a successor already groomed. Like the others she had bloomed at 18, and would leave the enclosed gardens at 48, thirty years a Council member. Bereft of Lusterone, she only took a powder to dispel the brooding in her heart. Soon she would be free to explode in joyous rapture; there was a retirement complex on the French Riviera for un-wilted flowers, waited on hand and foot with the diligence they had served the State.

Alba and her sisters, Livvy, Vesta, Numa, Garnia, and Amata, would dance in a circle until the moonlight faded. They might be linked but there was jealousy and distrust amongst them, feelings exploited by the surgeon general to divide and rule them.

There were whole departments recruited to monitor shifting allegiances and rivalries in administration, production, and the armed forces. And within each of these, there was a security department to spy on the spurned separate factions. The influence of each council member ebbed and flowed like the tides.

Colonel Anais was just another pawn in the game of claim and counter-claim. No one knew she wanted to capture the Queen. The Femocracy was awash with whispers of collusion, delusion.

The moon was becoming red and a crescent was predicted with the horn of man. They held the palladium ever closer to their bosom; the ashes of Carla Marks were kept in a turtle shell soup tureen once used by suffragette Emily Pankhurst. The ladle had been misappropriated by Vespertina many years before, when she had attended the entrance of Numa to the hallowed hearth.

The garden was an orchard but there was no Adam and his snake to tempt them into evil. Some said that should a man ever try to cross the frontlines, become Undiagnosed, the very prayers of the Council would stop him in his tracks, until the shemales dragged him back, kicking and screaming.

It was mid-day precisely, and most of the Vestal Virgins were collapsed on the floor, exhausted by their prayers to Mother Nature. Alba picked up the cushioned hammer, and crashed it into the large golden cymbal hanging at the end of the room, a ritualistic symbol. Across the Femocracy sirens sounded. They were calling men not to arms, but out of harm's way towards their medication, education: the white posts.

The posts formed circles over the green and pleasant land, a new Stonehenge, built upon ancient ley lines where possible. They were sacred to the Femocracy, mystical, mythical. But they had a modern purpose, the delivery of medication on a grandiose scale. Like an iceberg most was hidden, a network of underground cogs and conveyors.

Daily doses were delivered in the blink of an eye, using an iris scan. Every man was obedient, in line. There were four delivery points around the posts, each with a camera. Observation wasn't certain but reluctance led to a gruesome death: hung, drawn and quartered outside the Tower of London, a televised example. No man owned his own crown jewels, and the monarchy was long ago driven to exile in Outer Mongolia.

At the tall plastic coated posts each patient was greeted with a warm tone: “How are you feeling today? Press 9 for great and 0 for very low, or a number in between.” The synthetic voice, Melody, was caring, but most men were clever enough to always press 9 whatever the weather. “Any number below 9 will reflect your current illness, and please wait for assistance.” The unwell were helped into the back of an ambulance, and from there on to the frontlines or prison.

Once the meds were swallowed with a tot of water, Melody would hum, ‘Thank you for complying and have a nice day.” No man suspected the chemically altered chaser had a temporary effect, one of disorientation and confusion, to submerge any anger or thought of rebellion.

The state wide delivery of medication was a logistical triumph. It was a display of organisation that many hoped would win the war. A war started to refill the silos with grain and the shops with goods. The lie had been told so many times everyone believed it, but the truth was far removed. The Femocracy wanted what the Undiagnosed had, not the other way around; the system couldn't work unless it preyed on a continued supply of victims, medicated men.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The walls were granite, cold and hard like the hearts of our rulers, impervious to kindness and empathy. The iron portcullis rolled up, and so did our van.

The gatekeeper scrutinised my ID. He was a tranny with a five o'clock shadow.

“I thought you was dead,” he said.

“The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated,” I replied.

“I'll still have to check your authorisation, Professor Huxley.”

“Naturally.”

I was wearing the surgeon's green gown, a surgical mask, and his cowboy hat pulled down over my face. Known for his eccentricity, none of the crew inside the gatehouse appeared concerned.

“Damn, the lines are down again,” said the guard.

You never knew when army training would come in handy.

“Look, I hate to rush you, but I need a specimen right away; the last one just died on the operating table,” I mumbled through the damp mask. It wasn't the only thing I made wet these days.

Each prisoner would serve the Femocracy when called upon, they were ill. The guard scanned the vehicle and then Anais. She smiled at him, and the attention was off me for a moment.

“You shemales are getting more gorgeous by the day. I swear just like real women,” he said.

“I'm more like a real woman than you would believe,” said Anais smiling.