Context (52 page)

The
next morning, Ro skipped her academic classes. In the afternoon, she was
physically present in the small seminar room; but the seminar was drawing to a
close and she had paid little attention to anything Professor Davenport had
said during the previous hour.

‘I believe Anne-Louise was
assassinated,’
the
white-haired woman, Hannah, had told Ro and Luís.
And I use that term
advisedly.’

Ro jerked from reverie: the
professor was talking to her.

‘... afterwards, please, Miss
McNamara. There’s something I’d like to discuss.’ Then, turning back to the
student group as a whole: ‘In the matter of assignments, when you log on
tonight you’ll find…’

Shaking her head, Ro tried to
dispel the flash images: Anne-Louise’s impossibly angled body, inhuman rictus
on the white/bruised face.

The last of the other interns
filed out, and Prof Davenport smiled.

‘I nearly missed it in the
post-mortem.’
Hannah
had looked to Sergeant Arrowsmith for reassurance, before adding:
‘Microwave
interference pulse. Multiple sources — too weak to leave individual traces—intersecting
at the heart.’

And Sergeant Arrowsmith had said:
‘It’s a pretty fancy way of killing someone. Everything else the killer did
to her was misdirection.’

What did it mean? That she was
killed from the corridor or the ground outside the room? The distance from
killing devices to the room could not be great, because the killer had then
gone inside.

Unless there were two of them.
Accomplices...

‘Ms McNamara?’

‘Sorry, Professor. I’m coming.’

But it occurred to her, as she
walked, that Anne-Louise might have been murdered remotely because the assassin
thought she had the means to defend herself. Then he would have forced his way
into the room ... purely to disguise the manner of Anne-Louise’s death? Or
because he—or she—was looking for something?

And if the killing was performed
remotely ...

What if Anne-Louise wasn’t the
real target? What if... ?

She did not want to complete that
thought.

Oncimplant
notwithstanding, Ro refused his offer of lemon nicotine-slivers. Davenport
popped one in his mouth, and chewed.

‘Dreadful habit,’ he said.

‘What did you want to see me
about, sir?’

‘None of that “sir” stuff,
please. Um... I wanted to know, would you be comfortable talking to a UNSA
official called Dr Schwenger? She’s officially semi-retired, but highly placed
in the agency’s hierarchy, all the same.’

He picked up another lemon
sliver.

‘I... know who Dr Schwenger is,
Professor.’

At least, I’ve met her. I don’t
know her at all.

‘That dreadful business with
Anne-Louise.’ Davenport shook his head, then slowly replaced the lemon sliver
in the bowl. His sorrow looked genuine. ‘There may be an element of corporate
guilt involved, I suppose, or avoiding negative publicity. Have you seen today’s
news? The anti-xeno riots in Tehran and Dublin?’

‘More riots? Why now? No-one’s
protested about alien embassies for ages.’

Davenport shrugged his narrow
shoulders. ‘Who can tell? At any rate, you may be able to get some small
advantage out of the situation.’

From the riots?

Ro frowned.

Or profiting by Anne-Louise’s
murder?

‘What kind of advantage?’

‘A research assistant post in one
of our prime study centres, in XenoMir. That’s what they’re offering you.’

‘In Moscow? But I’m just an
intern.’

‘Nevertheless, that’s the offer.’

After a moment, Ro said, ‘It
sounds very interesting.’

‘There are high-g Veraliks, who
are interesting beings. Ephemerae from Limbo. And Zajinets—at least one at all
times.’

‘What do I have to do?’

‘Call Dr Schwenger tomorrow
afternoon, when you’ve had time to think it over. Is that fair?’

‘Yes ... Yes, it is. Thank you,
Professor.’

With a beneficent smile: ‘You’re
perfectly welcome.’

At
sunrise the next morning, she was in the Painted Desert, admiring the
candy-like mineral strata—sugary-looking white, green, black—which streaked the
low sandstone ridges.

At 9 a.m. she sat down—having
checked for scorpions and rattlesnakes—by a fallen pink/red tree trunk long
turned to stone: part of the Petrified Wood. Her rented TDV was parked back by
the automated tourist stop, a low white building with a curved solar-panel
roof.

I wonder what it’s like in Moscow
right now?

Certainly cold.
Moskva,
Moscow,
was almost as chilly as London. And since the last century’s North Sea
convection-cell reversal, and the loss of the Gulf Stream, London was bitterly
freezing: ice-locked for half the year.

Just when I was starting to love
the desert.

Red sand, a twisted mesquite
tree. And, above all, the sky: a startling blue, deeper than sapphire. Even
when occasional clouds appeared, they were twisted into wispy configurations
such as Ro had never seen.

Over the horizon, almost
invisible against the royal blue, two tiny dots.

At last.

She thought Sergeant Arrowsmith
and Hannah must have missed their own rendezvous. Although it had only been the
sergeant’s name tagged on the h-mail.

It’s not them.

Ro could not have said exactly
how she knew: minutiae in the handling of the craft. And, somehow, she could
foretell a deadly intent from the flyers’ attitudes, as they hurtled in her
direction.

She pushed herself to her feet.

Time to run.

Reddish shards flying in all
directions, clattering, slippery beneath her boots.

Run.

Dodged behind a horizontal stone
trunk, knowing its shelter was not enough, pushing onwards ...

Run faster.

<>

~ * ~

27

NULAPEIRON
AD 3420

It
was the thirteenth day.

Tom and his
brother-in-enlightenment ran easily, side by side.

‘The tunnel flows’—the elder
monk, Barjo, spoke without effort as they increased speed, pounding over a
footbridge -’the stream does not.’

‘No.’ Tom denied the koan,
laughing.

‘Just so.’ Accepting the
response.

Water gurgling beneath them.

They ran.

Brother
Barjo’s prayers were set at twenty klicks a day—a moderate phase in his current
seven-year cycle: this was the fifth such cycle—but for Tom’s sake, he altered
his devotions. Praying at a reduced sequence of shrines, so that he could run
three seven-klick laps, offering up the tiny distance increase as a prayer for
Tom’s perseverance.