Authors: Justina Robson
beyond the elevator's capacity every time she reached a floor.
The penthouse was rented for the band for the duration of their stay even though two of the members
both had homes in town. It had four suites, and Zal got his own. Lila's card opened the door but after
testing that she knocked and held it closed. Poppy answered it with a dazzling green smile and a squeal
of delight, standing back to examine Lila's new biker clothes.
'You're all back, Li!
Like
the leathers.' Poppy ushered her in and offered her a glass of some cocktail
from a big jar on one of the tables where several brightly coloured pitchers lay in ice water.
'Hey,' Lila said, glad to see her, whatever Malachi's suspicions were. 'You were great
last
night.'
'Yeah, yeah, just
warming up,' Poppy hummed. 'Heard you had a bad fall. Okay now?'
'Sure.' Lila hung onto the strap of her bag to show it
was heavy.
'Sorry, sugar,' Poppy said and pointed. 'Go right
in there. I'll get
you something cold.'
"Thanks, nothing strong,' Lila said and went
where she was told.
It
was the master bedroom. The bed was messed up and she could hear water running
.
Trust
Poppy,
Lila thought, getting some sharp words ready and starting to lift her bag back up when the water
stopped. She didn't
mean to exactly, but
she found she was still stand-ing there when Zal appeared, wet
and naked except for the short towel around his waist.
'Agent Black, don't you people ever knock?'
'Poppy told me this was my room. And you can knock off the Agent Black stuff. I think we deserve
first-name terms, don't you?' Lila surprised even herself with her tart response.
Zal grinned. 'You're so bolshy. I like that. I should thank you for this too.' He turned and showed her
the dark blue-black bruises on the backs of his legs and under his shoulders where she'd gripped him so
hard for so long. But
although they were bad they didn't
catch her attention at
all compared to the liquid
fire tattoo that covered the back of his shoulders
.
It fanned out in demon licks and tapered along the
length of his spine until the tail of it vanished into the green band of the towel. It looked like it was a clear
window of living skin beneath which burned a yellow and orange fire.
'What
is
that?'
'Oh that.' He made a slight
shrug. 'It's a demon thing.'
She got
the clear impression it
was so familiar to him that he'd forgotten about it, and that
he wouldn't
have shown her if he'd been thinking more clearly.
He seemed annoyed with himself as he lay back on the bed and turned the TV on with the remote
control. 'So,' he said. 'Not your room. Next door.'
His hands looked normal. Both of them.
'Are you okay?' she asked, letting the bag slide down to the floor. She went forward to see for herself.
'Fine.' He held them both out
for her to see. 'Apart from my hangover. How are you?'
'Fine,' she said, keeping a polite distance. 'Tired.'
'Want to sleep with me?' He gestured with one hand at the massive expanse of linen and pillows beside
him. 'I mean sleep too. Sleep. Switch off. Although that biker gear is nice. I like leather and big zips on a
woman.'
'Zo na kinkirien,'
Lila said, glancing at the towel. 'But you and I have some talking to do.'
'We have all kinds of things to do,' Zal said. 'But if you don't mind I'm going to do mine horizontally.
My head hurts.' He slid down into the sheets and pulled the towel off, throwing it
onto the floor.
'It can wait a couple of hours,' Lila said. She felt the noose of the Game around her neck tugging with
all this back-and-forth play, and hated it. She would have liked to stay, so she made herself pick up the
bag and go out
into the smaller room that
waited for her. She gave Poppy a glare on her way through but
the Faery simply smiled and shrugged.
'What? I pointed to where you wanted to go.'
'You're in trouble,' Lila told her
.
She closed the door and changed out of her bike gear into casual
clothes. A message icon arrived in the upper right
quadrant
of her vision to tell her that the tape had
arrived safely in the audio lab. Lila took a deep breath and a few minutes to look through her personal
effects and check them - everything was in place and somebody had put
the silver framed photo of Okie
in the bag as well, assuming it
was hers. She took the picture out, placing it in between clothes in her bag,
and put the frame into one of the empty drawers on her dresser, then called the pet resort to find out how
Okie was doing in her absence. He was fine. She felt slightly disappointed, and to get back her
self-control after that
and Zal she made herself go through a full and unnecessary systems-check.
Dr Williams called her in the middle of it. 'You shouldn't be back out there,' she said wearily. T
recommended against it. But you heard all this as you were leaving me in a cloud of exhaust fumes early
this morning
.
How are you?'
'Perfectly well.'
'Never worse news to my ears,' the old woman said with a sigh. 'Sarasilien told me that you
encountered Dar again. How was that?'
'He shot me.' Lila could say it without
a single flinch
.
She smiled, proud of herself.
'Is that
all? My my, how disappointing for you.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'It means what it says on the tin. How is Zal?'
"The usual obnoxious two-tone reactions.'
'To which you haven't
reacted a bit.'
'I'm keeping everything professional.'
'Lila.' Dr Williams became kind. 'Could you tell me about
what
happened in the forest, please?'
'I did a report. And you downloaded the rest
from my Al-self. It's all in there.'
'My eyes are old and tired, my neurons weary of the cool logics of AI analysis - indulge me.'
'Indulge me
indulge me, or,
you're bus
t
ed fool, now indulge me?'
"That
kind of thing.'
Lila closed down her shooting array and watched the guns vanish to their places inside her leg cavities
.
She rolled her sleeves back down over the scars on the remaining flesh of her arms as the synthetic skin
reassembled itself over the hidden components beneath
.
Although it
didn't
hurt she massaged her
shoulder which had become stiff, though it was well healed from the arrow. 'All right. Zal ran off into the
woods. I followed him. He drew a lot
of elemental forces to try and stop me, or, well, maybe they tried
to stop me on their own but
I passed them okay. He made a circle and got
high on elemental action
somehow
.
I don't
know how or what
that was about. Dar and his partner were hunting us down. I
neutralised her. A ghost came and threatened Zal so I broke the circle and
'That's enough of that,' Dr Williams said. 'Could you tell me about
the elf agent?'
'Oh, she was Jayon Daga's usual. Red hair, blue eyes, full of con-tempt, hated me for all the obvious
reasons.'
'And you did what
to her?'
T shot
her full of gengineered Pentothal and left her all asleep in a shady grove. She'll be fine.'
'And Dar shot you?'
'I think he meant to hit Zal,' but Lila wavered as she stated the obvious
.
She started to doubt whether
Dar was that
bad a shot, even in the circumstances - or else it
was the only shot he could get, and he
took it no matter that
she was in the way. It occurred to her that
perhaps Dar had deliberately shot
through her. A shiver ran across her skin, real and synthetic.
'Are you sure it
was Dar?'
'Of course I'm sure. I'd know him anywhere,' Lila said shortly.
'And then you carried Zal away.'
'He was unconscious, or something like that. I. . .' But
she didn't
really remember anything other than a
blur. "There was a ... I went
down along what
I thought
was the house track and I. . .' Unaccount
-
ably,
Lila felt
that
she was about to cry. She didn't know why, only that she had this feeling when she
remembered flashes of clarity about
running down the hillside. She tried again. 'You can get
across
country to the NSA Incon building because it backs onto the Wildlife Reserve on the edge of town, so I
went all the way around because I couldn't
be seen.'
'You went
thirty klicks out
of your way,' Dr Williams said. 'You
carried Zal for thirty-nine kilometres, with an arrow through your shoulder as your body tore itself apart
.
'
'It
was the stupid program,' Lila said. 'It
wouldn't
reset
itself
.
I would have gone back to the house otherwise,'
'Yes, of course.'
But
now Lila wasn't
sure about that. 'I won't
be using it
again,' she said.
'Would you like to know the status of the debugging report, Lila?'
'No,' she said. 'Why are you telling me all this?'
'Because I want you to come back alive and I want Zal to survive you,' Dr Williams said. 'And as long
as you think everything else is at fault, that
gets less likely.'
Lila cut the connection and sat, listening to Poppy and Viridia talking in the main room, the clink of their
glasses and their easy laughter. She was insulted, frankly, that
Dr Williams thought that she was in the grip
of some big psychological trauma that
could drive her to do something as crazy as take Zal on a
cross-country run in the middle of a fight. The woman was obsessed. How could she make a last remark
about Zal surviving her? That was ridiculous.
Lila contemplated making an official complaint about the devious manipulation of psychologists, but of
course that would only go through Dr Williams, so what was the point?
An elegant full-length mirror with a gold Baroque border standing in the corner of the room showed her
sitting bold upright, rigid as a post. The magical stain in her hair and skin looked like a splash of blood.
Lila's own silver eyes stared at
her, reflecting the mirror's reflection into an infinite regress
.
She got up and
covered the mirror with a towel from the bathroom, unable to suppress a shudder - she was an idiot
to
think that Zal flirted with her
.
A cold, noxious feeling ran through her and she felt
ugly and angry.
She walked back into Zal's room and snapped the TV off.
'What's the matter now?' he said, rolling from his side onto his back. 'I thought
you'd done the decent
thing and left
me to suffer in peace.'
'I have drugs that can fix that,' she said and sat down on the opposite side of the bed to the one he was
on. She held up her hand and showed him the hypodermic which she'd used on Dar's partner, glad to see
him look quickly away. 'I want my answers.'
'Do you? About what?' He put one hand behind his head. His flaxen
hair was drying. It
was longer than she'd thought
and his skin was paler, although it had some hints of
Otopian tan about it on the face and hands. His large, dark eyes ignored her effort to engage them and
stared up into the princess canopy which draped and belled over the bedhead
.
She felt no hint of
glamour from him at all. He did a pretty good impression of being utterly uninterested. She had never
seen any-one more attractive than Zal at that
moment, and it felt like a punch in the face.
'Let's start with why you ran off to the woods.'
'Let's say I'm not
going to explain it. Perhaps I think it's enough that
you see me in all my weaknesses
without
having to label them for you so that
you can put
them into your case file and think you know me,
Agent.'
'Well, will you be doing it
again? Can I expect
to get shot more times because you put us both in
positions of needless danger?'
'No doubt,' he said. 'And no doubt I will be lying here thanking you for saving me more times
.
I believe
that's how it's supposed to work, isn't it? And after a few more sessions you can pity me and fall in love
with me, and I can feel grateful and emasculated and throw myself into further extremes to prove my
virility
.
'
'You know the whole script,' Lila said, well aware that
he was diverting her effortlessly
.
She felt as
though she was a runaway train and at
the same time was trying to change the points on her own tracks.
The Game magic wanted to trip her up every which way. She had to think twice about
every word she
said. 'We can change it. Let's finish the Game for a start.'
'Here I am,' he said and this time he did look at
her with that wicked glance that
glittered and was up
for anything, the one no elf ever wore. He grinned at
her hesitation
.
'You can't
bear to lose, can you?'
'I'm in no danger of losing,' Lila said. 'I was ordered to finish it.'
'Oh, well, I think that
Sorcha told you that's no good. We'll have to live with it, then, for the rest
of our