Chasing the Dragon (21 page)

"No," Lila said.

"Then he ain't gone after her. Black, you say your office has some
-he took one hand out and waggled it expressively-"spatio-
temporal problem. Think that could have been here?"

She suddenly saw where it was going and reluctantly decided that
he was as smart as he was irritating. "Possibly ghosts were here too.
Not just Jones."

"Show me the thing again." He gestured at Bentley, who held up
the weird sextant for inspection.

"She left that?"

"I think so," Lila said.

"Let's take a wild stab and say the Fleet can't steer too well without
it," Greer said. "Or maybe it already got its course. What's the setting?"

"The device appears to employ a number of complex spatial and
temporal ... ," Bentley began.

"Just the payload, not the journey, "Greer broke in.

"It is a bearing, not a location, sir," the android said patiently. "If
here and now, today and Bay City, is indeed the intended destination
then the best I could to is plot a vector that pointed here."

Greer raised his eyebrows and shrugged and nodded in a "gimme"
expression.

"The instrument was pointed here from Fundament, sir."

"Remind me."

"Under Under," Lila said. "Where Faery and Thanatopia and
Alfheim and Demonia all fade into the Voidgulf. If you believe the
topology. Aetheric science. Unverified."

"Mmnnn," Greer rocked back on his heels, considering. "Unveri- fled, my ass. We've come a long way in the last couple decades. And
these Ghost Hunters of Malachi's were turning tricks out in the
Voidgulf?"

"So he says."

"Why the bloody hell would she bring them here?"

"Collateral effect," Lila suggested. "Maybe she didn't intend that."

"Why leave this here?"

Lila looked at the strange instrument. It had stopped freezing and
seemed to be room temperature now. Bits of the room had begun to
steam in the radiant warmth of the heater. "Maybe she was just
dumping it."

Greer turned to her, eyebrow raised, "Go on?"

"Well, if you come across some powerful, important thing and you
realise it's a lot of trouble, too much trouble, maybe you'd do your best
to drop it before it got you killed, or worse."

He looked at the dress and then back at her eyes. "Any other ideas?"

"Perhaps she wanted to implicate Agent Malachi in some business," Bentley said. "Or it could be a kind of payback, though it
doesn't seem to bring as much trouble as the ghosts themselves."

"As I understand this Malachi had paid the Hunters to carry on
working in the field," Greer said. "So that puts them on the same side.
And Jones is a planewalker so she doesn't need a damned satnav."

"If Malachi needs or wants it, then why didn't he take it?" Lila
asked.

"Good question," Greer nodded. He looked at both of them.
"What were you planning to do with it?"

Lila shrugged. "Keep it for when he gets back. He must know the
answers."

"I don't like the look of it," Greer said. "Bentley, take it to the
lockup. Max security. Leave Mal one of those little plastic chip things
so he can get it out of hock, but flag it so it'll call me when he does,
right?"

Bentley nodded and got up from her post. When she'd gone Greer
turned his eyes under their heavy brows to Lila. He looked at the dress
and at her quite frankly. "You getting along all right?"

She recognised that the question encompassed her entire life.
"Sure," she said.

He made a face that was frankly unbelieving but shrugged. "To
your office then. I'm sure that's quite all right too, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir." She hesitated. "I was going to wait for Mal."

"Yeah well, I'm sure he'll find us if he has to," Greer said, ducking
under the door flap. "Come on. I need to get home before ten tonight.
Mrs. Greer has promised me not to call and I've got some TV dinners
in the fridge that are only a week past the date."

Lila followed him back into the buildings. He held all the doors
for her. Damned if she didn't find him strangely comforting, though
she tried not to.

"I guess you'll be wanting another bike," Greer said as they
walked. He sounded like an affluent, indulgent father.

Lila nodded.

"Bikes are only for good girls," he informed her. "And what are you
planning to spend your allowance on?"

"Pocket handkerchiefs," she replied smoothly.

"You got somewhere to live?"

"My house," she almost didn't manage to choke that one out.

"Well, aristocracy always have a hard time keeping up with the old
buildings," he said. "Roofs, windows, all need attention. Of course
smart aristos can usually find some relatives to stay with."

"Yes, sir," she said. "Will this enquiry into my private life take a
long time?"

"It's done. I just wanted to figure out when you might be available
for dinner."

Lila was nonplussed. "Are you asking me on a date?"

"You dropped the sir."

"It got old."

"I was just asking about your plans."

"My husbands ... ," she objected, playing the game.

"Yeah, tragic story about that. But you know. Said you were fine
with it."

Lila thanked some god privately that they had reached her door. She
really didn't know what to make of Greer when he was like this, and so
far he was always like this. She didn't like to admit that the needling
felt like caring in some shitty disguise, and knew it was because she
wanted the friendship and was praying that it was a disguise. It wasn't
like her to be so sure of her own motives. It spooked her.

She opened the door. Grey sea heaved. The glass ship was thoroughly wrecked now, spars of it planted in the beach and among the
debris of the office like vast outgrowths of crystal. The white sheets of
the covered articles floated on the sludgy ice water. It lapped at the
sloping shore of natural woven hemp carpet and around the flotsam it
had made of all Sarasilien's carefully preserved things.

Greer whistled between his teeth, impressed. "That's some interior
designer you've got. A little apocalyptic for my tastes, if I'm honest.
Who's the dead guy?"

"I've no ..." Lila started to say, moving slowly through the bitter
air, but suddenly she had a terrible feeling she did know. For a
moment she stared, seeing the awful scene and behind and through it
the warm, relative comfort of the ordinary office, untouched by magic,
all the laboratory behind it safe with the glass retorts shining in their
cabinets and the crystal vials of unknown fluids glowing like past
Christmas baubles. Her gloves thickened, furred as she walked forwards, fighting suddenly as the dress got caught in the swell and suddenly lifted on the weak tide, soaking and heavy as lead, the cold
eating into her as if it were alive.

The figure roped to the mast was slumped forwards. Lank shreds
of dirty blonde hair hung down from a scabbed and balding scalp, heavy with ice. They obscured the face, but the blue hands curled into
fists were familiar as her own, even knuckled tight and solid with frost.
Shards of broken crystal cut her hands and sliced the dress to ribbons
as she struggled to reach a place where she could climb out of the hipdeep swell and onto the crazed frost of the ruined deck. Behind her she
could hear Greer talking on the phone, his laconic voice easy, confident
as he gave orders, but all her attention was on the figure doubled over
itself a few metres away. It was wearing filthy rags that were whited to
look clean with ice, snow, and salt. They were thickly bound on, but
they couldn't entirely hide the length of the legs that were buckled at
awful angles and frozen fast to the sheets of crystal with thick coats of
ice like candle wax.

Lila fought out of the water, digging her fingertips into the deck,
melting holds and pushing them into molten glass, making claws as she
was lost in boiling, spitting water and billowing clouds of steam.
Cooling, heating crystal screamed and splintered under her and the black
smoke of lace and the yellow, stinking smoke of burning fur obscured the
ugly fight to pull tens of pounds of soaking satin out with her as it clung
around her legs. She slid across the metre and a half on her belly, frightened in case the figure was frozen solid and in her haste or carelessness she
might break it. But she made it, tearing herself free where cold stuck her
repeatedly to the glass; the faery could look after itself now, she didn't care
as she let her claws become blades and cut through the thin ropes that
bound the mast and ship to their captain. Only as they parted around her
fingers did she realise they were made out of hair.

She remodelled her hands, warmed them, tentatively reached for
the shoulders, tried to lift as she crawled up to her knees, dress splintering and refreezing over her until suddenly it seemed to lose patience
and heated up. The deck beneath them cracked in half as it failed to
keep up with the change. The body was almost solid. Lila threw the
remnants of the huge skirt over it quickly, willing the heat to find a
trace of life and help it return. Under her hands she felt the outline of the face quite clearly, the shape of the bone under the flesh exactly as
she had feared.

"Zal," she whispered. "Don't be dead. Wake up."

Suddenly a movement in the swell broke the deck apart and they
were in the water. The weight of the mast dragged him down to the
bottom. Lila plunged into the blackness, able to see with other frequencies, struggling with the sticking rope and the awkward shape of
the huge crystal spar that tumbled away from her, its shattered end
almost slicing her in half. She broke it to pieces with heat in her hands
and then searched around. Ultrasonics showed the submerged shapes
of solid things, including the curled body, and the slight movement of
something inside it. She grabbed hold so carefully as it turned in slow
water, and brought him to the surface. The seawater sucked viciously
at her legs and feet, and then with the breaking of the ship the entire
ghost seemed to have lost heart. It shivered, as one thing, and within
a few seconds the whole biting reality of it evaporated into thin air,
leaving her standing in the ordinary room, dry, surrounded by a tumbled mess of furniture and objects piled in heaps.

She was shaking. She daren't look down.

"Get him to medical," Greer said, holding the door for her. "I'll
meet you there."

"Elf things," she said, aware that she wasn't making a lot of sense.
"There have to be elf things here."

"Yeah, but meantime there's things and people there that can help.
Nobody can touch this stuff except you. So take him to where he's safe
and come back and look for it. Okay?"

No mention of Zal being dead. She feared he was. Or maybe not,
but maybe not Zal either. She daren't hope. He weighed nearly
nothing but then he never had. Could you survive those temperatures?
That place? She didn't know. She did as she was told.

The armed guards who had arrived stood back to let her pass and
took up posts at the door and in the hall, batons in their hands.

All the time she was walking she was talking, doing deals with
faeries and powers in her head-if you let it be him, if you let him be
alive, if you let me have this, if you're not playing headfuck games with
me, then I'll ... but she didn't know what she'd trade or do; there was
nothing big enough or that she had. And then there was the ultrasound
she had once used in an ER to heal and charm another elf, playing
through his body: yes it's material, yes it's flesh and bone, yes it has all
the right parts in the right places if you don't count some breaks and a
certain amount of violence and the crystals forming in the cells and the
shadows that defy labelling. And his heart doesn't beat and his lungs are
all but empty of anything you could call air, though they've got a lot of
water inside them grinding their surfaces to pulp with its salt. And the
air doesn't warm him but she does. If love was heat, then she had
enough, didn't she? And where was that flicker of life she'd have sworn
was real, no imagination ... not in the body but in the aether that was
strong in ghosts. Could you have ghosts of the living?

There it was again. On her skin the metal elementals lit like butterflies, emerging, wings stretching. Yes. No mistake. But gone again
now. How to catch it? How to hold it down and be sure it didn't leave?

She racked her brains for all she knew about Zal and saw him running in the woods, by that dreadful building, to the hill and the
hollow where he'd pulled Zoomenon to him. His addiction was fire.
Yes, and his demon affinity was fire. But no Otopian combustion was
going to work. Elemental fire was what she needed now. Sarasilien had
to have some. Must have some.

The medical centre had changed since her day. Where machines
used to bank and encroach on every side there was space. White had
gone, natural was in. It was like a hotel room in a garden. Even the
doctor and the surgeon were dressed in scrubs that looked like casual
clothes, faces groomed to smile and reassure. No stethoscopes or scanners here, just a few passes of the hands, sympathy.

They put him on a bed and trained some lukewarm heat lamps on him to thaw him out slowly because he could break like the glass,
and someone said something about thermoshock and still nobody
used the D word so, still praying, not looking in case it was too
much, Lila left him there and ran back to the office with its guard,
the androids in the hall, the wreckage of a lifetime's work waiting for
her, and began to search.

She was fast, she knew that, but it felt like eternity as books and
papers flew through her hands and in front of her eyes, meaningless,
useless. The outer office had nothing. The laboratory-well, that took
some time, even at hyperspeed. He had a billion things. Odd. Bad.
Strange. He wrote in code that took her half an hour to figure out, and
that was just for the lesser objects. Potions, herbs, plants, the place was
thick with the worthless crap of ages. Poisons, there were a thousand.
Antidotes a thousand and ten more. Magic circles and wands and
swords and cups-what to choose? Does it matter if they don't match?
It didn't matter, it turned out, as she couldn't cast anything. Human,
machine, not magical at all, even in the dress, even holding the pen,
even using every votive article lined up like the lich king's garage sale.
No trips to Zoomenon for her, not even a flicker of hell.