Cloud Castles (11 page)

I hefted the spear in my hand, wondering what would happen if I touched the head – but I already had, hadn’t I, back in the hall? I gave up. Exhausted as I was, I knew I would be best advised to head straight back to the town with
it, start talking as I should have done in the first place. It’d be a lot riskier now; but trying to hold on to something like this would be even worse. I was looking back, wondering whether to go on foot or risk the ‘copter, when I saw, rising behind the bulk of that mysterious hall, a glimmer of glistening white against the greying sky. A drone of engines came to me over the fields, and up from beyond the towers of that strange hall rose the pale outline of an airship, like the one that had chased me. Behind it, nosing upward like a breaching whale, came the rounded prow of another.

Thanks to Le Stryge’s influence I’d evidently left it a little late to talk. Wearily I fumbled for the keys; luckily they were still on my belt. I stared dully at the spear. I was tempted just to chuck it down into the grass for them to find; but Le Stryge and the other brute were still around somewhere, and the airships would be more concerned with catching me. It might easily fall into the wrong hands before anyone got to it. Impatiently I snatched up the old necromancer’s case from where it had fallen, and slapped the spear into the velvet. It fitted perfectly, and the case snapped easily shut. The airships were approaching arrows now; and they were fast, far faster than I’d expected. I tore open the cockpit door, thrust the case back behind my seat and leaped in. I twisted the key in the starter and jammed on my helmet just in time to save my ears. No preliminaries; the moment she reached full revs I shoved the collective forward and twisted the throttle, and she fairly leaped off the hillside. I tipped the cyclic, tapped the rudder pedal and sent her sweeping away up and out across the valley. The airships saw me and climbed after me; I banked across the top of them to turn in a tight arc around the tall towers in my path. They tried to follow, almost collided, and fell away to my rear as I soared up and away towards the clouds. A grey shroud closed around me, the note of the rotors changed slightly, and once again I was flying blind.

Radar showed me the mountainside, and I climbed higher yet. Then, quite abruptly, the world was full of light and noise again, the long rays of a sinking sun and the voice of the Frankfurt flight controllers squawking in my ears, demanding my position and flight path, and how did I manage to vanish from their screens like that?

Unthinkingly I tabbed on my little navigational
computer. Its entry rang up on the control screen.

There was a moment of
what I could only call strangled silence from the controllers, and then a great shout of laughter.

All the way home the metal container lay on the floor behind my seat, clinking gently against the support like a dog pawing for attention. When I had to land at Rouen to top up the extra fuel I’d used, I tried wedging it against the back seat with my cases, but it fell down again when I took off. Even without the clinking, I wouldn’t have been able to get it off my mind. Something important, evidently; something appallingly powerful; something I could touch with impunity – so far – but who else? I’d have some interesting explaining to do if some airport security man went up in flames.

As it turned out, there wasn’t a problem. This was my home heliport, the men on duty knew me, and waved me and my trolley full of climbing gear right on through without checking anything. All the same, I heaved a sigh of relief as I jammed it into the back of my car; it wouldn’t fit in the boot of this vintage design. I’d been afraid that black glassy head would get damaged despite all the velvet, but there wasn’t a mark on it. So far, so good – but what was I supposed to do with it now?

I knew what I ought to do, of course – return it to the city, somehow. But they’d been a touch too trigger-happy for my taste; and besides, that might easily draw Le Stryge down on me. As it was, even on the drive back from the heliport I began to get the feeling I was being marked or followed in some way, though my mirror didn’t show any cars tailing me. I wanted to know what it was all about, this sinister object, before I made up my mind. I knew people who might well have more of an idea than I did – not too difficult; I’d find them, and ask. But till then I’d better hide it. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you hang on
your wall, and it wouldn’t fit in any of the office safes – besides, I didn’t want those kind of forces attracted to either my home or my business. I’d had enough trouble with that before. Unless …

I almost burst out laughing, the idea was so simple; and yet it ought to tie anyone coming after that thing in knots. I’d planned to stop off at my new offices in the C-Tran regional headquarters, anyway. When I got there it was late afternoon, almost everyone had gone home, and when I wandered into the service department, as I often did, it was almost empty. Then, with the spear neatly stowed, all I needed was a few minutes with my desk terminal to set it all up via the central computer. As simply as that, the spear was off my hands. I spent a few minutes more carefully doctoring the records to remove any traces of what I’d done, and touched the on-screen button to log off. But instead of the usual prompt panel an error message flashed up, and I swore. Then I saw what it was.

‘Oh, my
God!’
I groaned, with the awful feeling that I, Chairman of the Board, Herr Ratspräsident himself, was about to crash the entire network and throw the business into total chaos. Then I remembered a couple of things, and swore again, violently. Firstly, this software had failsafes on its failsafes, for obvious reasons; I ought to know, I’d insisted on them. Secondly, I was using a smart terminal that didn’t
have
anything as plebeian as i/o ports, S, G or Z for that matter; and thirdly, this was totally different software from the stuff in my little portable, a different operating system, even, and yet here was the message in the same format. So it must be a virus, probably originating within the company; somebody playing sillybuggers, right enough. They might have made it funnier; then they’d have something to laugh about in the dole queue, when I caught up with them. But that could wait.

I logged off again without a trace of trouble, and sat back with a sigh, staring at the great skyscape on the wall opposite, copied from the one I’d commissioned with microscopic care for my original office. A vast blue skyscape, an archipelago of moonlit cloud and rising above it a great
cloud-arch like a frozen wave, and sailing through it, to the stars beyond, a tall square-rigged merchantman with moonlight silvering its sails. It always used to puzzle my visitors; I told them it was an allegory of the romance of commerce. But for me it could have been painted from the life. I got up wearily; it set all kinds of longings stirring, that painting, but right now I just wanted to go home.

I heard the sirens as I was shutting things down. When I turned off the lights I saw the distant glow through the slats of the blinds. I went over to the window and peered out; it looked bad, a fire slap in the middle of the business district, office country. One more reason to be glad I’d resisted locating us there. I locked up and made my way down along the corridors, deserted now except for a few cleaners and the odd nighthawk still ploughing through the day’s workload. I waved as I went past, and they waved back, but there was always a touch of hesitancy, of awe maybe; I didn’t like that, though I knew it was inevitable. I did want to be open, accessible, able to communicate directly with staff at all levels …

I snorted. I was thinking in management jargon. I just wanted to be able to talk to people, that was all, and have them talk to me. It had been that way at the old firm, a friendly place even when it got somewhat tough; I’d always been able to tell Barry to get out of my office when I had work to do, and when I took over I tried to foster the same spirit. Almost everybody had known me on the way up, after all, but here that just wasn’t possible. Right from day one I was the Old Man, I had too much power over pay and promotion and prospects. It isolated me at every level. That research chief in the marketing department, Angela something, she wasn’t at all bad-looking, she was bright, reasonably unattached or so it seemed; I liked what I’d seen of her, I had a fair idea she liked me. Suppose I dated her, though? Just asking her out was a hundred times more difficult when I was the captain of her ship, the master of her fate, and not just one of the guys from the office. Would she feel she couldn’t say no? Would she feel she could take advantage? Suppose we ended up in bed? That took on all kinds of dodgy connotations, and the same questions applied. Okay, they’d never worry a lot of bosses I knew, but I was learning. It was another reason I didn’t go for Lutz’s kind of temptations, or any of the others you run into on the international circuit. The trouble was that the glow of
virtue didn’t warm the bed any, and I hate electric blankets.

I stepped out of the lift to the night porter’s desk and logged off my security tag, just like the lowliest typist. With the porters, at least, I could exchange the odd casual word.

‘Evening, Macallister! Any idea what’s going on in town?’

The head porter rubbed his short-cut Navy beard. ‘Aye, Mr Fisher – o’ course you’d not’ve heard, you bein’ away at the fair and that. It’d be some sort of protest march, from all they say. God knows what kind o’ crap they’re on aboot, but it wis peaceful enough at first. Seems some rough lots tagged along, hard-line anarchists or whatever they call themselves this year. It’s they startit some fights. That’s all I hear so far, but it must be gettin’ worse, by they sirens – eh?’ As if to underline it, another one went by, an ambulance this time.

‘Sounds like it. Right. I’ll be watching my way home, then. Put a board up, will you? Warn people – and if they need taxis to get them home, get them on the firm’s account, all right? Cleaners and everyone. No, don’t bring the car round, I’ll manage myself. Night!’

I could see the glow in the sky quite clearly as I turned out of the car park. My usual route home led right past there, but it would probably be blocked with emergency vehicles and TV crew and general rubberneckers; I’d better try going around the side, though that meant a much longer and fiddlier drive. So I went zigzagging round the back-streets, and sat drumming my fingers at innumerable traffic lights; and all the time the noise grew louder. At last I was past the centre, and turned back towards the old dockland area, now heavily residential, where I lived. But as I turned out onto the broad downhill road that was the main route there, I jammed my foot hard on the brake. The wide street was a rolling mass of smoke, shining a hellish red, and through the air something came flying like a minor meteor to burst on the roadway in front of me. There was a sudden ball of flame, and I locked the brakes, skidded across the junction and fetched up smack against the roundabout in the centre. Normally a concrete tub of rather grubby flowering shrubs, now it was a mass of little fires, smoking and spitting.

Another petrol bomb came whizzing out of the redlit mirk and burst nearby; it didn’t go off, but the petrol ran down the gutter and touched the rest, and suddenly the street opening
I’d come out of was a sheet of fire. There was a roar, a siren wail, and I barely managed to get the car in gear and pull away before a huge fire engine came racing past, right across where I’d been. I saw with a sense of dizzying unbelief that it was on fire itself, trailing flames from one flank. A trail of yelling, jeering forms ran and capered after it, grotesque against the leaping firewall. But it outdistanced them; and then they saw me.

I threw the car about; it was fast, but its turning circle was on the wide side, and I had to swing it around more or less under their noses. Stones bounced off the long bonnet, smashed one headlight – and suddenly there were more of them, running out in my path, cutting me off from escape downhill. I couldn’t drive through them, not without building up speed. I kept on turning till I was facing uphill, and accelerated suddenly away as another petrol bomb exploded just behind. I was heading closer to that louring glare, and as I drew closer I saw the fire that shed it: it figured, the Sixties hotel and shopping complex, thoroughly in flames – and, beside it, no fire engines, but the burnt-out skeleton of an ambulance. Debris was falling into the empty road, and the smoke was becoming choking; going back downhill didn’t look like a good idea any more. There was a handy side-road just a little way up, if I could reach it – but as I slowed down, a figure dashed across and sprang up on the running board.

‘Get me up top!’ he shouted. ‘To the main street!’

I was about to throw him off when I recognized his dark coveralls as police riot gear, with shoulder stripes. ‘You’ll be lucky!’ I yelled back. ‘How about Ramsay Lane?’

‘Don’t be daft, man, there’s a nest of them down there broken into the pub! We’re regrouping up there, we’ll get you behind our lines!’

‘Regrouping?’ I steered us through a chicane of smouldering cars. ‘You mean they broke you?’

‘What’s it bloody look like?’ he snarled.

‘But protesters—’

‘These aren’t ordinary protesters! They half killed a couple of marchers who tried to reason with ’em! We were in the shopping centre, supposed to cut off anyone escaping through there. Escape! They bloody attacked in force. There
were thirty of us in there. I don’t know if anyone else got out—’