The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (86 page)

I put the burnt notebook next to
The Dispossessed
on his table. Mr. D looks at it curiously.

“What’s that?”

“Something I found in Morrigan’s house.”

Mr. D sniffs. “Let me guess, you burnt it, and activated it somehow.”

“It was burnt, yes, but what it activated was dealt with. I need you to keep what’s left of it safe.”

“The question is, will I be safe from it?”

Mr. D has managed to survive even death. He’s hung around when every other RM has gone, devoured and deposited by the One Tree. I can’t imagine anything threatening him.

“You’ll be fine,” I say. It doesn’t come across as confidently as I intend it to.

So many people in my life have died in this last year. Better people, stronger people, more caring people. People who I loved. I can’t promise Mr. D anything.

W
hen I shift back to my office, Faber Cerbo’s sitting there alone. He jumps, startled by my sudden arrival. No knife this time. Even he is not that stupid.

“It’s done,” I say.

Cerbo’s smile is about as wan as you can get.

“You got something on your mind?” I ask.

“Yes. You see, I have an idea.”

“It certainly doesn’t look like a good idea.”

“It may not be a good idea, it may be a horrible one, but it might work.” He takes a deep breath. “While you were away, trapped beneath the sea, it came to me. Something that you said about blood being enough. Well, I think you’re right. To stop this god maybe all you need is a lot of it. I’ve done the math. If you used the blood of every Pomp, there might just be enough—”

“No. It’s—no.”

The only one smiling now is HD.

“I know you don’t want to do it, but this plan, it may be our best chance.”

I shake my head. “Kill every Pomp and use their blood to stall a Stirrer god? No, I’m not going to do that.”

“They’re all going to die anyway, if we don’t stop it. Them and everything else. It’s ridiculous, I know, here I am arguing for my own
death, but I’d rather that than be responsible for the end of all life, not that I’d have long to dwell on it all, being dead. Wouldn’t you?”

“No, and you aren’t responsible, Faber. I’m responsible.” I realize I’m shouting. I lower my voice. “There has to be another option.”

“The only other option is to let the Stirrer god set the time and place for the confrontation, fight it entirely on its own terms—terms which, despite my best efforts, we don’t have more than the merest inkling of, I might add—and be defeated. Same outcome, wouldn’t you say, Mr. de Selby?”

“You only call me that when you’re pissed off with me.”

“I do not.”

“I am not killing my employees. I refuse to do that, it’s what made me different from the other RMs, it’s why Suzanne chose me for this role, and it’s who I am.” I glare at Cerbo. “Faber, you find me a way of beating this thing, a way that doesn’t involve killing everyone I care about, and we’ll talk.”

I can’t tell if he’s relieved or disappointed with my response. “What if that’s the only way?”

“It can’t be, I refuse to believe it.” I remember my dream, the ocean of blood. Was this what my subconscious mind was throwing at me? “And how would it even work anyway?”

“You’d call it to you. Just as you can call your Avians, or your scythe.”

“Call the fucking blood to me?”
I can do that?

“Steven, think of the potency of that blood. Maybe that’s what the scythe is for. The end game in a battle with Stirrers. You drain the blood of all the Pomps in the world, and no Stirrer will be able to face that.”

“No, it isn’t going to happen,” I say. “Not that way. A new world can’t be built on that sort of bloodshed.”

“It’s not murder. It’s not madness. It’s sacrifice. It’s what being a Pomp is about—isn’t it? Just on a larger scale. Think about it. When all the Stirrers and their god are defeated, you’re not going to need
Pomps. Not in the way you need them now. The workload’s going to be lighter.”

“No.”

Cerbo sighs. “I understand. I can even say that I’m slightly relieved. But remember, as long as you have your scythe that’s an option.”

“Would you do it?”

I can see the answer in his eyes. “You do whatever it takes. Of course I would do it.”

“The world burns before I kill all of you to save it. The whole fucking universe.”

“Now look who’s being extreme. I’ll be back for the meeting,” Cerbo says. “I need to make peace with some things.”

“It’s all crashing to an end isn’t it?” I say.

“Yes,” Cerbo says. “One way or another, one sacrifice or another, yes.”

I need to talk to someone in the government. I need to know what strategies they have, and how we might be able to use them if worse comes to worse. Thing is, I call my usual contacts and no one answers. I try Tim, but he’s busy wrangling Ankous. Worse than cats, as he puts it.

So I call Alex.

“Where have you been?” he says.

“I’ll tell you about it over a drink one day,” I say. “But we need to talk. Face to face, if possible.”

“As it happens I’m having a coffee right now. Springwood, got the afternoon off. Luv-a-Coffee in Centro.”

I shift there, and glance around; I’m in the right cafe in Springwood, standing right next to my target. My appearance startles a guy pushing a shopping trolley. I wink at him, he frowns, moves on, because no one appears out of thin air—not even in the southern suburbs.

“Well, you’ve moved out into the sticks haven’t you?”

Alex looks up from his chai latte, sliding his hand over a card. “Christ, Steve, you surprised me. And what’s with the hair?”

“Has to be a first for everything, I suppose. And I don’t want to talk about it.” My jaw drops. “Are you wearing a skivvy?”

“It’s cold.”

“But come on. A skivvy…you look like a Wiggle.”

I pull the chair out from beside him.

“What you got there?” I ask, trying to get a view of the card he’s obscuring not particularly well. Alex and sleight of hand don’t really gel.

“Season pass to the Lions’ games.” He shakes his head. “I forgot, I got these when Dad was…It’s stupid. I haven’t been to a game all year.”

“I’ll come with you,” I offer.

Alex squints at me. “Didn’t know you followed AFL.”

“Nah, I’m Bronco’s boy,” I say, “but I can tolerate Aussie Rules.”

“Tolerate?” He slides the card back into his wallet.

I grin at him. “Just saying, that’s all. Putting the offer out there.”

Alex nods. “Appreciated. Might be fun.”

“Yeah. When this is all done with, it would be good to, well, to think of something other than bloody Stirrers.”

“You think it’s that close?”

“Tomorrow, maybe today. Brisbane, as far as we can tell.”

“That what this is all about?” He looks from me to the comet.

I nod. “I need to know what we can expect from your lot if everything goes down as badly as I suspect it will.”

“Doug Anderson’s the one you need to talk to.” Alex sighs. “Steve, you know all this shit. He’s been your liaison since Tim left the department.”

“Can you talk to him for me? Tee up a meeting. He’s not been taking my calls, and I’ve got Tim off chasing other things.”

Alex shakes his head. “Hardly in his good books at the moment.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he likes my association with you. Undermines his authority somewhat.”

“Christ, after the stuff we’ve been through! You’re my unofficial liaison, but I need my official one now.”

“Yeah. Office politics, though, you know how it is.”

It was office politics that started all this. “Of course, I do. But I still need to know where we stand; things are coming to a head. And, you’re a cop, you don’t even work in his office.”

Alex sips his latte. “We Black Sheep really like to put that stuff behind us. Him, on the other hand, I’ve never seen anyone work as hard. He resents what I gave up.”

“So when did you decide that you didn’t want to be a Pomp?”

“Very early on. It never felt right to me,
for
me. Dad pushed it for a while, but I know he was proud of the choice I made.”

I nod. “Saved my life.”

Alex smirks. “On numerous occasions.” He sips his coffee. “What about you? Why did you decide to become a Pomp?”

“I couldn’t think of anything else.”

Alex laughs. “Well, you’ve done all right for yourself.”

“Yeah, I’m a star.”

“Fucking glass-half-empty de Selby, eh,” he says dismissively, pulling out his mobile.

I order myself a takeaway coffee, leaving Alex to deal with Doug by himself—he hates an audience. By the time the coffee’s ready Alex is hanging up, there’s a thin line of tension between his eyes that I don’t think he had before.

“Doug didn’t sound happy,” he says, letting the phone skitter across the table.

“Right now he has reason not to be.”

“He said to meet him in the usual place in twenty minutes. I impressed upon him the urgency of the matter. What’s the usual place?”

“It’s a secret.”

“You be careful.”

“It’s all I ever am.” I give him a little salute and shift out of there.

Tim’s still busy when I get back, so I grab Lissa.

“I think I’m going to need your negotiating skills,” I say.

“Who have you pissed off?”

“No one, not yet. I’ve a meeting in about fifteen minutes with Doug.”

“Aw, Dougie. What a lovely guy. How can you piss off Doug? The usual place?”

“How do you know about that?” I thought my meeting place with Doug was secret. Sure we’ve met a half-dozen times there, usually had a beer afterwards, when the talk became less formal. But as far as I know no one had ever seen us there.

“I have my ways,” Lissa says.

I raise an eyebrow.

“Well, you follow me with those Avians of yours. Sometimes I just follow you.”

“He’s late,” I say, needlessly and for about the fifth time.

“It’s too bloody cloak and dagger for me,” Lissa says lifting her voice above the whale song. I admire her profile, and she catches me looking. Her lip curls, the slightest movement, but I see it, and she knows I do. Her green eyes widen—there’s mockery and love in there, and something deeper, and darker. A shared hurt, a history more convoluted than our six months together deserves. For a moment, all I want to do is kiss her.

I’m glad she’s with me. Since my little underwater expedition I really don’t like being all that far from her.

I’m holding her hand, which makes it less cloak and dagger more
pseudo date in odd location, with a dash of peril; about all we have time for these days.

We’re standing in the long, dark hallway that runs outside the Queensland Museum and works a little like a wind tunnel, three life-size model humpback whales floating above us. A little down the way, an ultralight plane is suspended from the ceiling, but it’s the humpbacks that are making all the noise, well, the speakers bolted into the walls beneath them.

Lissa groans. “If I hear any more bloody clicking.”

Whale song is haunting and powerful, but half an hour of it can be a bit much, I guess. And, a lot of it sounds like someone letting air out of a balloon. HD is raging. It can’t stand the singing, and it’s keeping me on edge. That and the memories it evokes. Just this morning I was a prisoner of the Death of the Water

I grind my teeth, squeeze Lissa’s hand a little tighter, and drive HD down. It’ll rise back up, it always does, I don’t have much space within me to push it into: something that alarms me every time I wake up in the morning and see HD staring back at me out of the mirror. Its madness and horror, the source of all my strength.

The stone blades are mumbling too, in sympathy with HD.

Lissa frowns. “It’s troubling you again?”

“It’s always troubling me,” I say.

Footsteps echo down the hallway. Lissa and I glance at each other. “Just me,” Doug says. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Couldn’t we have met at a cafe?” Lissa says.

Doug shakes his head and gestures at a nearby bench. Lissa and I sit down, Doug paces in front of us. “No, I know the CCTV doesn’t work here. There’s no one to see us meet, and no way that anyone can sneak up on us.” His voice is low, I recognize the mildly panicked expression on his face.

Doug’s sympathetic, but he’s hardly influential. Not after the events of the last few months. Mortmax has grown increasingly threatening in the government’s eyes. Not only State or Federal.
Every government agency in the world that has something to do with us has been keeping a very close eye on me and my Pomps’ activities. They need us, but they’re not sure how much they can trust us, or what happens if we fail.

Frightened governments aren’t a good thing. They never function well. Even if they have a reason to be frightened. But he’s all I have.