Authors: Justina Robson
building.
Poppy had been quite right
when she said that
the letters sent
to Zal care of Ozo Records had been
hideoso. They were also, as far as Incon were concerned, of possible relevance to national security.
Although some of them were crackpot in nature, hating Zal for his race, for his taste in music or for his
betrayal of all matters precious to Alfheim, those were easy to deal with: from elves or from humans they
went straight in the bin. But the dangerous ones that
had sparked Lila's operation weren't like that.
These few were letters that had been delivered on magical vellum, and what they said changed
according to who read them. When the manager of the fan club had opened them they read like regular
fan mail. The senders had even included cheques to join through special promotional rates promised
through an ad in
Vani
t
y Fair
which had accompanied a big article on Zal. But in Zal's hands the words
and letters spun themselves around. It wasn't possible for Lila to read what he saw, but she'd been
provided with Zal's brief report on it. The letter read:
Return by the lost way or not at all, Return by the longest day or not at all:
Else be lost and ever wander, Life and limb and spirit squander
.
It was a general kind of magical threat that
any of the non-Otopian realms might
have employed, but
unlike most spellcast items it bore no telltales of its origin that Incon's aetherial forensics had been able to
decipher. Since magic was created through the spirit of the creator, it was technically not possible to
have traceless magic. Magic bore the signatures of the maker all through it, like a hallmark. But
the letter
had proven completely flavourless.
The lost way part referred to the elf-only gateway out of Otopia to Alfheim
.
The longest day was easy:
that
was Midsummer Solstice, two days away. The rest
of it
seemed to indicate less favourable
conditions. Other Incon agents had been dispatched into Alfheim to see if they could find out whether it
had come from someone there. Lila, glad to be in Otopia, didn't know what she was looking for now, so
she looked for anything
.
The studio was set
up in an underground room, insulated for sound. Above that, on the ground level, the
administrative offices filled the space. Most of the areas were populated, so Lila used her day clearance
pass on the Fire Escape door and went up another flight
.
Through the concrete and steel of the walls it
was hard to obtain any accurate scans but
she did her best, searching another empty office, a storage
cup-board, a room full of old equipment. It was here that
she detected a trace of illegitimate radio
transmission-Inside, junk was stacked to the roof. Lila lifted boxes and crates and old packaging. It was
covered in dust and soon she was quite filthy but
she persisted. The transmitter was behind a filing
cabinet which was full to the top with broken mikes, old amplifier stacks and lumps of electronics that
must have been made before Lila was bom. She couldn't be bothered to unpack it for its trip to the
corridor so, after checking that nobody was near, she engaged her internal hydraulics and lifted the entire
thing, sliding it along the carpet on one edge until it
snagged on the lintel. Breathing out, sucking her
stomach in, Lila sneaked past it into the corner of the room, felt a tug against her leg and heard a ripping
sound.
'Ah, crap,' she said and looked down at the burst stitches on her new pants. It
was just
a whole day of
too-late, she thought.
With more force than necessary she bent down and yanked up the carpet. In a billow of dust
and dead
flies she sneezed and reached down, carefully letting the little finger of her right
hand rest
against
the tiny
object
which looked like a pebble. Intricate receptors housed where a knucklebone would have been
identified it as a Faery device, part silicon and part metal. It was using bounce-retort techniques to get a
reasonably clear sound pickup from the studio, and was broadcasting on a coded frequency to
somewhere quite local. It must have been here a long time for its battery power was almost
exhausted.
Lila listened through the bug for a moment or two.
She could hear Zal and the band. The raw energy of the music reached up and caught her. Zal's voice
was a shamanic, self-destructive growl - t
he pleasure is
t
o play, makes no difference wha
t
you say
...
It
made a strange, dark exultation rise in her chest, the sensation so clear and quick that she jerked in
surprise. Her Al-self picked up frequencies that her human ears couldn't hear. She wondered for a split
second if there were lots of dogs and cats in the intended audience, but her AI
corrected her. Zal's anomalous sounds were in the sub-audible band, not the high pitches of specialized
whistles.
Lila stored the information to send back to the lab later, in case it was an important slice of data, and
took her finger away from the bug, deciding to let it lie there for the time being. It
took a few minutes to
replace all the crap where it
had been. When she'd done she dusted herself down and tried washing in
the Ladies. The soap and water did a reasonably good job but there was nothing to be done about the
tiny tear she'd made in the outside seam of her trousers where it
had caught
against
the corner of the filing
cabinet. She patched the inside with a piece of sample tape which she carried along with the rest of her
field forensics kit in a capsule container that
fitted inside her jacket
pocket
like a wallet, and went
back to
the studio
.
What
she really wanted to do was get
outside and trace the broadcast
to its reception unit, but
that
would mean getting too far out of range of His Highness. Lila had to settle for a seat
next to Jelly in the
recording booth where she watched everyone except
Zal do ten repeats of the same song whilst Jelly
fiddled levels and mix and his assistants dashed around making much of nothing to do.
During the repeats she watched everyone closely. The musicians were so used to the regime that they
patiently repeated everything. Poppy smiled once to Lila and they had to stop that
take.
Jelly screamed at
her, 'Stop grinning! We're self-destructing here, not
selling hamburgers!'
Zal looked briefly at
Lila through the glass, when he turned around from talking to the DJ between
takes of Luke's bass track. He mouthed something at
her which she wasn't
meant
to hear, but
Lila could
read his lips even if she hadn't
been able to instantly recalibrate her hearing filters to pick up the actual
sound. It
was elvish words saying a thing she was reasonably certain no elf had ever said before.
Zo na kinkirien.
I love your pants.
She was puzzled for a moment
but
pleased she didn't
actually look down as she realised the tear on
her seam must be visible and that he was taunting her for going off instead of sticking like glue to his side.
He'd turned away before she could give him her frosty look.
Jelly listened through his private headphones, jouncing on his seat. 'One more time. Everyone except
the lord of darkness himself - Zal, you're done,' he said through the connecting mike and added. 'Ear
bleeding effort
ladies and gennlemen.' He cued the intricate, slamming drum line with a fingertip and
glanced at
Lila. 'Hey, don't
go getting ideas about Zal. You know I have to say it. Every girl comes in
here and the boys . . . okay they're like mostly engineers or admin and shit
. . . they always end up getting
. . . you know what I mean?'
Lila had no idea but she could guess. She nodded, rather interested that
this was still standard practice
after so many years - warn the new girl off, insult
the bodyguard's intelligence, make sure she knows she
doesn't
count. She smiled vacantly at him with agreement
whilst
inwardly seething.
'Good. Cos you have to like be around him all the time and that's not
gonna be a picnic. Don't
tell him
what to do. And don't tell him what to take. In fact, don't speak, because that
all pisses him off and we
have to start touring on Monday and I can't hand him over to Jolene all pissed because good tour
managers are like rocking horse shit and if she quits we're all screwed
.
Don't
let
him go on another
goddamned bender
.
He missed two dates last month, off his head out in the woods somewhere, and it
took four days to find him even and we never found whatever it was he took, maybe it was mushrooms
or some elfy thing he dug up, you know? And he'll resent you. Oh man, he already resents you. He'd
resent you more if you was a guy, though, if that makes it any better. That's all I can say.' Jelly paused as
the music started and then turned back. 'Do you have to shower with him?'
'No,' Lila said.
Jelly made a face that said it was a sport he was sorry he was going to miss, and then he slapped his
headphones back on.
Lila tested her patience to the limit by sitting quietly for the next hour simply watching, learning that
when Jelly said it was the last take, it wasn't. She used the time to sharpen up her intelligence on Alfheim
and tried to use the extensive database of genealogical data given her by Incon to try and place Zal.
The only thing he'd ever said about where he came from was in the
Vani
t
y Fair
piece and it read:
'There's no reason for me to be here other than the music. I like to sing.'
He'd lived in Queenstown, in the north of the Bay City area, for six months before The No Shows got
their act together. Before that
there was no record of anything unusual. He'd entered Otopia from the
Alfheim gateway under the usual restrictions and all his paperwork
was in order. Lila thought Zal must be a shortened version of his real name, but the database contained
no elvish names beginning with a Z. He was good at talking in Otopian, but so were many elves, who
picked up languages and accents like good carpet picks up dog hair. Lila couldn't genome test him
without
his permission according to inter-national law, so that was out of the question for the time being,
unless he were involved in a provable criminal action
.
It really looked like he was just an elf who wanted
to be a rock star. If only that weren't against every chosen or given trait
of Elfdom she'd ever known. But
then nobody here seemed to have a problem with it, probably because they were all getting rich off it.
Lila was grimly aware that stereotyping had provided the majority of her own attitudes towards his
species, and what
had happened to her in Lilirien, the Second Realm of Alfheim, two years ago hadn't
done anything to broaden her mind. The problem with Alfheim had always been that
the elves had very
little contact
with humans in or out of Otopia. They didn't mix with faery much either, and they had active
rules of avoidance regarding demons - it
was something to do with the magic systems each used.
Ancients and elementals moved freely among elves and were even welcome, but this was because all of
them had derived from similar magical roots. To Otopia they were neigh-bours; cordial and distant, as
out of Lila's league as though they belonged to a country club that
she could never afford to go to.
To the rest
of the elves Zal must
look like he was slumming it. She wouldn't
be surprised to find all the
threats of any substance coming from resentful authorities and individuals there. 'Ace of Spades', in its
Mode-X format, was comprehensively about as opposed to the serenity and rarefied values of elven
society as you could get. Which is why she took the letters seriously. She knew that
the elves'
protectiveness over their precious culture extended well beyond simply keeping secrets and writing
letters.
At last everything had been done according to Jelly's incomprehens-ible standards
.
The engineers
began to pack their equipment, and the band decided they all wanted to go out and eat, with a view to
staying out all night It was the last
thing Lila felt
like doing but
it
wasn't
her place to argue
.
Only as they settled down in their private dining room at the Lizard Lounge did she realise how hungry she was. She
found herself placed next
to Jolene and Luke, across from Zal.
'Cool 'tacts,' Luke said, grinning at
her
.
'Good hair too
.
'
'Thanks
.
' His flirting with her made her sorry her suit
was so ordinary.