Chasing the Dragon (8 page)

"Every hoard, dungeon, keep, and bank vault," he said happily.
"You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff and people and-"

"And you didn't notice that the Council has issued a death warrant
for you?"

"Of course they have," he said with pride.

She decided to drop that part. "And what about Madame Des
Loupes?"

"Her I would've asked. But she vanished before I could get there."

"They say you killed her."

"They say. Who say?"

"The Council. And my ... the head of the Security Service here."

"They're wrong."

She used the palm of her hand as a paper and remade the image
there for him. "Here. Looked like this."

"I wouldn't make a mess like that. I'm not vengeful. I just want
what I want."

"I know it wasn't you."

"But"-he turned his head and white hair fell across his face-"I
am a bit concerned that someone will get me before I get anything
useful. It may be no such thing exists in Demonia."

"Just go check the coroner's necromancers first then."

"Hmm." He closed his eyes, mulling over that. "And what else
happened? You were out a long time."

"I got a job."

Teazle snorted with laughter. "And your part of the deal?"

"Closer now," she said, referring to her mission to discover what
devices the rogues had used against him months ago, and what she
could do to arm him against them. "Much closer."

"Grr, I hate it when you're winning," he said. "And I'm hungry.
Let's go out and eat."

Lila got up and recovered the bowl. There was enough water left
for a very quick wash. When she put the dress on, it had miraculously
cleaned itself and become a fashionable short-skirted item. She checked
for the pen and slipped it into her pocket. In the meantime Teazle had
dressed and was staring at her.

"What?" she said.

"That's a pen," he said.

She waited.

"Pens write."

"I thought of that. Don't know what to put. Or where."

He eyed the dress with suspicion and nodded. "Worth experimenting with."

"I'll sign the restaurant check with it."

Teazle's body had lost its gleam. His hair was dull. He looked like
any thirty-something human man in casual clothing with unusually
long white hair.

She stepped out of the cave and floated to the ground in the twilight. They walked together to the road and, despite his complaints,
called a cab.

ast midnight, in the hours when everything in the world is closer
to the final darkness, Lila lay with her eyes open, her head on
Teazle's cool shoulder. The cave was almost totally black to human sight,
but she saw well by the slight starlight filtering in from its mouth. It
was at this time she could hear the machines most clearly, though it was
not when she was conscious, but in dreams that their meanings came
through to her; and that was why she stayed awake as much as she could
because inevitably, with the fall of sleep, came the invasion.

As it was she listened to her lover's heartbeat and the sea, and tried
not to hear underneath those things, underneath all things, the
whisper of near-silent static that was no static: the endless om of everything the machines had ever said or thought or done in one eternally
repeated present. They were not bound by time. Their signal was once,
and for all. There was nothing of them it did not contain. They were
the signal. She got that at last. They were not material beings in some
other world sending messages. They were the signal. The original
pieces that had been grafted to her were made material by the work
and command of the signal, though it was not any more material than
a radio wave. The pieces that had consumed her and of which she was
now part were crude, brutish, in this three-dimensional universe, little outgrowths into space-time from a place outside, their only chance to
communicate with her level of existence. She was a beacon, a receiver,
an interpreter, a transmitter, a device for the signal.

The signal itself was so complex, so vast, so unsuitable for any
time-locked linear creature to hope to comprehend that even understanding this much about it had taken her all the years of her cyborg
existence-which were two in strictly human terms, but, counting
process iterations since her final conversion in the depths of Faery, now
spanned some thousand or more ordinary lifetimes. Atop this frenzied
torrent, her human experience was a patchwork so thin, so scattered,
so trivial that it was negligible. In the total of the signal, in which she
knew she must be continually hearing the story of her whole life, and
death, she was a few kilobits of data, assimilable in a fraction of the
time she could imagine as the smallest amount of time there could be.

The nights were so long.

She thanked god for the white demon, whose sleep was the sleep
of the just, as deep and long as the ocean was wide. Without him she
doubted she would have her sanity. Only his unquenchable arrogance,
his absolute commitment to life and to the fulfilment of his part in
it, had been an anchor strong enough to hold onto in the first days of
her return home to find home long gone. Teazle wasn't moved by a
fifty-year blip in his vision or the passing of much that he knew. His
sense of self was too strong for anything to topple. She on the other
hand ... most of what she'd thought of as herself was burned away or
redundant. Her name seemed not to refer to anyone she knew. When
it got bad, as it did around noon, after another visit to memory lane,
she'd come and cling to Teazle and suck some of his energy up in a
down-and-out junkie fix. Of course that's what it was. He didn't
mind it because her neediness gave him power. She knew she ought
to knock it on the head, but the close physical contact was too much
like breathing to give it up. Whatever she liked to pretend about
their sex together, it was a sanctuary, and damned if she didn't deserve one of those. Oddly, it didn't remind her of Zal-one of the few
things that didn't.

She heard the high tide creep up the sand and slough out again as
dawn came.

The light woke the demon. He stretched and then sniffed her,
kissed her, and put his arms around her. The sensation of being at the
end of the world receded and the static quieted itself.

"I want you to find out what happened to Madame," she said,
yawning horribly widely and for so long she got jaw ache.

"On top of my search? You don't ask much." He sounded thoroughly pleased with himself.

"I think it's going to be the closest thing to a lead we get. That,
and I've got the keys to Sarasilien's office."

There was a pause and she could almost hear the cogs turning as he
thought about this. "Topple."

"I'm sorry?"

"It is a Topple. In Demon probability mathematics a Topple is a
domino effect of important events occurring in rapid sequence because
of an unknown yet critical value set reaching fruit."

"The sad part is that I know what you mean," Lila sighed. "God I
long for the old days when it would all have ..." She passed her hand
in a whoosh over the top of her head from back to front. "You think
there'll be more?"

"It is certain. We are at the outset of a Conjunx. Better take spare
panties today."

She laughed and thumped his chest.

"Harder," he said mildly, stretching again.

"Don't get yourself killed," she said.

"I am an avatar. My heart is pure. I cannot be defeated," he replied.

She frowned and traced the powerfully square line of his jaw.
"Avatar of what?"

He shrugged and said nothing but smiled infuriatingly and then slowly got up and out of the bedding, dressed himself, put on his
swords, and composed his hands together in front of his heart, genie
style. "Until later."

Lila managed to get her hands over her ears and her eyes shut for the
vacuum decompression of his teleport departure. Bursts of short-lived
nanoparticles bloomed and faded in his wake. She got up and went to take
the dress off its hanger. It was a fashionable evening gown again, about as
unsuitable for office daywear as she could imagine, short of what she'd
worn yesterday, but not putting it on was unthinkable, so although she'd
seen herself returning to work in black combats and looking like she
meant business, she was stuck with flimsy bias-cut indigo silk. In spite of
her feelings towards it she was reticent to tear the dress, but she couldn't
figure out how she could ride a bike in something that looked like it hung
to her ankles and had a train. She put it on and it clung to her here and
there, fine as tissue. Little faery letters glowed in its rich, royal colour.

"Please," she said to it, feeling a tinge of despair. "Nobody will
take me seriously in this. I need something more ... military."

The dress didn't budge. She didn't have any mirrors, but she was
ready to bet that the spaghetti straps and filmy look wasn't improved
by a sport bra and sensible pants. She already hated herself for begging
the smug faery concoction.

"Right then, two can play at that game," she said, and without
hesitation transformed herself into the full black-metal cyborg she was
used to. Tough arms. Big, kick-ass boots. Breastplate. Greaves. To a
nearly blind person in very bad light it might just look like she was
strangely built and wearing evening gloves and platforms, but to a
sighted person in daylight it looked strictly out-patient.

She was getting used to that, and at least this way it was half on
her terms. Zal had gotten her the armour, and when she got Zal back
from his near-death existence in some nether dimension she was going
to kill him.

The pen rolled towards her and stopped at the edge of the card board box that was the nightstand, desk, table, and rubbish bin. She
picked it up and slid it into one of the empty magazines in her
forearm. At least there was no damn bag to carry.

By the time she got the bike out of the spinney and onto the
hardtop she was in a foul temper. The dress was slightly ripped and a
seam had started to go, but as usual once it had set for the day there
were no mendings or concessions. She hoicked the long skirts up
around her hips and stuffed the train under her bottom to sit on the
bike. She thought of tearing it. She thought of slicing it up. But she
didn't dare. She had the feeling that the dress knew what she was
thinking and was at once laughing and sinister. It had turned bullets.
It was better than any armour she knew of. The bloody thing.

She gunned the power and the bike slid smoothly and infuriatingly
silently up to high speed. How could you have any satisfying emotional outburst with this modern technology? She snarled at it and
pushed it to the limits every which way she could, but it never made
a noise and the traffic was too busy to risk breaking it.

She was early at the flower stall. They looked at her with the usual
odd looks as they made up her order. Half the petals came off during
the ride to the memorial. Lila stood with her bunch of sticks and half
flowers in the shade of a eucalyptus tree looking at the stone where
Max's name was carved with a flourish. It glowed because the faeries
had done it. Max's portrait was there. She looked older than Lila
remembered her, but she was smiling.

"I brought these for you," Lila said, and dropped the flowers down
on top of yesterday's and the day before's. "I wish you'd say something.
Thanks would be nice."

She'd sort of hoped the faeries would have enchanted the portrait
to speak or leave her a message, but so far it was just a picture.

"I can't keep coming back is what I wanted to say." She put her
hands on her hips and pursed her lips, feeling cross. "I don't see the
point. You're not really here."

People out walking in the park area, of which the memorial gardens were a part, were visibly avoiding her.

"So I guess this is good-bye."

Surely there ought to be some greater sense of occasion?

"Bye then."

It felt so wrong, so inadequate, so ... nothing. She didn't know
what to do. She could barely accept that Max was dead. She certainly
couldn't accept that she had lived a lifetime alone and died in old age.
She had seen her only a few months ago, still young. And another part
of her felt that she couldn't just leave Max here and walk away. But
she'd already done that. Fifty years ago. She thought that if she'd come
here enough, then one day it would all seem real.

The flowers had a blank card. She never wrote on it, but today she
wanted to. She took out the pen, not without misgiving, and uncapped
it. It was a fountain pen. The nib was a bright silver. She didn't know
if it would even write, but it did. Good-bye, Max. She almost put wish
you were here, but at the last moment she stopped and put the lid on the
pen. She wasn't sure it was true. How old would Max be now? Eightyfive. Coming back just to hear her sister complain wouldn't really be
that wonderful. She didn't want any repercussions.