The Szuiltan Alliance (The Szuiltan Trilogy) (6 page)

He stopped at one of several intercoms set at regular intervals into the walls and pressed the transmit button.

"Agent Jack Holt in Corridor One."

He lifted his finger and, after a second of static, a computer generated voice droned from the intercom's speaker grill.

"Room 5A, Corridor Twelve. The Council are waiting."

Jack headed without hesitation for the inter-complex shuttle service, small, unmanned travel cars connecting, in seconds, corridors that would otherwise take several minutes to move between.

This must be important if he was actually to face the Council.

Steve headed straight for the full 2-litre bottle of MBP that stood on the bedside cabinet as Suzy closed the apartment door behind them.

"A little present," she said. "To welcome you home."

Steve smiled and unscrewed the top, breathing in the unmistakable odour reverently. He hadn't been able to afford a bottle since his last ship had been destroyed in the storm. Suzy did have her good points.

"Do you want a glass?" asked Suzy at the same moment that Steve lifted the bottle to his lips and began to drink. A wry smile crossed her face. "Silly question."

She turned towards the accompanying bathroom.

"I'm just going to freshen up a bit. Won't be long."

Steve watched her go in silence. It was no good. He couldn't let it go on like this. He couldn't just drink her booze, sleep with her and then leave again. He would have to explain to her that, whatever her feelings for him, he did not,
could
not, love her. It wasn't fair to either of them to carry on as it was.

He was barely a third of the way through the bottle when she came back into the room.

Her hair was still green, although she had washed out some of the luminescence, and she had taken much of the makeup from her face. She wore a floor length dress that was almost transparent in the backlight of the bathroom. He could see her nipples, dark and hard, pressing against the thin material, and the deep shadow of her pubic hair. She was all but naked and he could feel the familiar lust and desire growing within him. This was something else he had denied himself while searching for another ship.

But this is all wrong.

He took another gulp of MBP and tried to clear his suddenly dry throat.

"Suzy," he began, before a rough cough broke his words. He tried again."Suzy. Listen. We have to talk."

She stepped clear of the bathroom and the light clicked off, giving her dress an opaqueness that Steve found relieving.

"Since when have you wanted to talk?"

"Please Suzy. This is serious."

The smile faded from her face, replaced by a concern and nervousness that Steve found surprisingly endearing. She sat down on the bed next to him. He cleared his throat again and took a deep breath.

"This has got to stop. This whole thing... I can't lie any more." He was staring at the floor, the bottle of MBP clutched tightly in one fist. "We need to sort it out, now."

"Sort what out? I don't like the way you're talking Steve. What's wrong?"

There was a slight tremor in her voice that told him she already understood
exactly
what was wrong. But he knew he had to say it. She would never accept it unless he came out and said it to her face.

Shit! Why does life have to be so fucking hard?

"I know you have feelings for me Suzy, and I'm flattered, I really am, but..."

"I
love
you. You know that. I've been in love with you since that first night."

She was clutching her dress in one small fist, kneading it nervously. This was a conversation she had always dreaded yet, strangely, she had expected it earlier than this. Somewhere inside she had always known that Steve was not the kind of man to settle down with one woman.

"Please. Don't. I know you ... love me," he stumbled over the words, "but I... I don't..."

He stopped, unable to state what must be obvious to her. Why didn't she end his struggling? Why didn't she just say she understood? But why should she? She was making him suffer. Making him say it. Could he really blame her?

He took another deep breath and closed his eyes, gripping the neck of the MBP bottle tighter than ever.

"I don't love you Suzy. I never have. Don't you see?"

He had expected to hear the sobbing by now. He had thought she'd be in despair, or enraged, or something. He wasn't ready for the silence.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her for the first time since he had started talking.

There was a faint smile on her face as she stood up and activated the panel by the apartment door. The door slid open with a faint hiss.

"Well. Thank you for explaining it all to me Steve."

Her voice was calm, quiet, unusually so. It disturbed him.

"Don't you want to say anything to me?"

He was confused. He had been ready for the outburst of strong emotion. The tears. The rage. He had not been ready for this.

"What were you expecting me to say? Did you expect me to beg you to stay? To say that maybe, in time, you could grow to love me? To shout at you for using me as a cheap fuck? What's the point? It's over. I've known it for some time and now you've finally had the courage to tell me. Thank you. Now, please go."

He stood up slowly, unsure whether to take her at her word, and went to place the bottle of MBP back on the bedside cabinet.

"Take it, please, with my compliments. That must be about the only friend you have."

He held onto the bottle and made for the door, hesitating as he reached her, turning to say something, anything, but she was looking away, and he realised she did not want to hear it, whatever it was he might have said.

He stepped into the corridor and the door slid shut behind him.

After a moment’s hesitation, he headed towards the bar. What little money he had could not be better spent, at that moment, than on another bottle of MBP to supplement the one in his fist which, he was sure, he would soon finish.

In some strange way he was hurt by her reaction.

Where were the tears? Perhaps I misjudged her feelings for me? Perhaps I was being too conceited? It wouldn't be the first time. But she said she loved me, didn't she? Was that just something she said to make me feel wanted? Are there others she says that to when I'm away on trading flights?

His pride was hurt. He didn't like the feeling.

He decided not to stay. It was better for both of them if he left. That's what he told his conscience, but he could not totally eradicate the feeling that he was simply a coward, running away whenever he could rather than face an awkward situation.

He hoped Jack had been wrong about the scarcity of jobs. He didn't want to stay on Sellit any longer than absolutely necessary.

Chapter 11

Mayor Roger Lane was anxious, nervous in the car without his usual entourage of chauffeur and bodyguard, but it had long ago been agreed that he would come alone to the meeting.

The meeting.

It was so long since those first tentative approaches that he found it difficult to remember who had made the first move. Did it matter? It seemed to him that there had been a mutual convergence of ideas and desires. They had been lucky to find each other, if you chose to believe in luck. He believed in Larn and the power of the Larnian faith, the true Larnian faith, not that bastardised abomination practised by Earth. It was Larn who had brought them together, and it was Larn who would see him through his fear. This was jihad, holy war, and nothing could prevent the truth from ultimate victory.

The air car sped him through the skyways of the inner suburbs and out past Suburb 95, where the buildings began to thin and the surrounding desert's patient and inexorable invasion of the city limits became obvious. Sand crawled up the empty shells of buildings, fanning out in treacherous drifts that could bury a man in seconds.

The economic impact of the war was perhaps most blatant out here, where the money stopped and the poor and disadvantaged battled daily with the desert for survival. Many of these buildings, mere skeletons of structures that had once reached tall, had never been rebuilt since the early surface fighting. Others had simply been abandoned as their owners moved further into the city or were buried where they fell.

Sand clattered like gunfire against the car as the Mayor turned into the rising winds of the desert's regular afternoon sandstorm. He flew blind, unable to see as the drizzle of sand became a deluge and then a raging torrent, a river of airborne sand that, according to legend, could strip the flesh from a human in less time than it took to die from the wounds inflicted. Too many people lived out here on the edge of the city for the Mayor to believe that, but it still sent a shudder of cold fear through his body.

He tried to relax, letting the car’s drive computer navigate the storm, weaving past unseen obstacles as it carried him deeper into the desert on its pre-programmed route.

The first ruins of the ghost town faded into misty view as the car passed out of the worst of the storm, leaving the full ferocity driving towards the suburbs far behind him. Brick, concrete, steel and plastic jutted from the sand, jagged skeletons of what had once been the vibrant outskirts of a frontier town. Further down the main street, sand drifts reaching almost to the top of battered signposts and broken streetlamps, more substantial buildings had withstood the onslaught of the desert slightly better, empty husks and crooked, crumbling facades in equal measure on either side. The computer guided the car round one corner, then another, moving away from the remains of the centre of town to the sand-filled bowl of a grand plaza and, at the rear, his destination, a small but once fashionable hotel which, despite its brick and plasteel façade being pockmarked by sand, had stubbornly refused to be beaten by the desert.

The car came to rest in what had once been the foyer, rivulets of sand trickling off the surface as the door swung open and the Mayor stepped out. He was nervously aware of the tail-end of the storm that continued to clatter against the walls, but what little did find a way in through the empty frame of a door or a widening crack in the structure got little further. It seemed safe.

Ahead of him stretched a curving staircase, black and scarred with age, tattered remnants of a once luxurious carpet hanging like flayed skin from the bones of the wooden steps. The top of the stairs faded into darkness, but he could just make out broken railings and the suggestion of pillars. Around him was the foyer, empty of the furniture that had once filled it, full of the atmosphere of dead and near-forgotten memories. The reception desk stood almost complete along one wall, broken by rot and the sheer weight of time. There was no one in sight. He was alone. Perhaps he was early?

He put his hand on the car door to push it shut.

"Leave it!"

His hand froze, moved shakily away from the door handle. He could not tell where the shout had come from, it had echoed too much in the empty interior.

"Move away from the car."

He took several steps backwards, nervously glancing around the foyer. Where was the voice coming from? Where could he be hiding?

They descended on the car apparently out of nowhere, four men holding raised weapons which the Mayor recognised, with a cold block of fear in his stomach, as government issue, hand-held, explosive projectile weapons. Had Carlton discovered his intent? Had he been betrayed? If Carlton knew of his plans he was dead! His legs threatened to buckle under him and he struggled to keep them steady.

Two of the grim faced men stopped near him, their weapons pointing steadily at his head. The other two approached the car cautiously but quickly. One searched the interior while the other stood a little way off, his weapon levelled at the car. They checked the exterior in the same fashion, always one covering the other. Apparently satisfied, they stepped back and holstered their guns. The two guarding the Mayor did the same.

"I do apologise Mr Mayor, but we have to be careful. There are government spies, loyal to Carlton, everywhere at the moment. He’s grown paranoid since the announcement of the impending treaty with Earth. I hope we didn't frighten you?"

The voice came from a tall, broad man who now strolled casually from the deep shadows somewhere behind the reception desk.

"I was a little startled," said the Mayor, regaining some of his composure as he recognised the intermediary he had met with several times before. He had not realised, until he straightened his back and forced some sense of authority into his posture, that he had been literally cowering with fright.

"The weapons made me unsure." He coughed to clear his throat. "They look..."

"Government issue? Yes, I know. We got them from a shipment that went 'missing' a few months back. It wasn't difficult, and they're good weapons."

The man stepped clear of the shadows and smiled at the Mayor.

"Now that the formalities are over shall we go to meet my employer? He's quite anxious to meet with you I'm sure."

The Mayor, now fully recovered, nodded and followed as the man turned and strode towards the staircase.

The stairs creaked as they ascended into the darkness of the upper floor, an uncomfortable nervous fluttering unsettling the Mayor's stomach.

Most of the doors to the upper rooms were closed, the numbers faded and unreadable, but one or two stood open, black holes in the dark walls of the corridor. The Mayor passed these cautiously, nervously, not wanting to look into their deep darkness, afraid of who or what may leap out at him.

They walked through two sets of rotting fire doors, hanging loose on their hinges but not yet fallen, to a doorway surrounded by a faint corona of light. Without a word, the man leading the Mayor pushed the door open and gestured for the Mayor to enter.

Squinting against the sudden brightness, the Mayor edged past the armed man and, as his eyes adjusted, focussed on the other man sitting behind the desk in the centre of an otherwise empty room.