by Ian McDonald
‘Were you at the concert?’ Analiese asks. ‘I don’t remember you. Who are you?’
‘Oh dear,’ the woman says. The man inclines his head and Analiese feels a brief, sharp needling pain in the back of her head. She lifts a hand.
‘Don’t do that,’ the woman says. ‘No, really. There’s a combat insect attached to the back of your neck. Now, can we chat?’
Analiese opens the door, conscious of the thing on the back of her neck, conscious of the man and woman following her into the room as if attached to the thing and her spine by electric nerves.
‘Can I at least put the setar away?’
‘Of course,’ the woman says. ‘It’s a valuable musical instrument.’
She lays it in its case, folds the fabric over the strings, hasps shut the lid. All the time, the thing, the thing, that black thing on her neck.
‘Who are you?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ the woman says. The dressing room is small, the woman perches on the edge of the shelf, the man on the toilet. ‘There is someone would very much like to meet you. He’s on his way. He’ll be here very soon. We’re just here to make sure you don’t miss him.’
‘The rest of the group …’ Analiese says.
‘You’ve told them you’ll meet them later in the bar,’ the woman says. ‘And I don’t think you’ve noticed, but we’ve screened off this room.’
The man pulls back his jacket to display a black box at his waist. He looks pleased with himself.
‘It’s quite a sophisticated piece of technology, actually,’ the woman says. ‘It’s surprisingly difficult to isolate a person from the network. There are ten thousand eyes on us all the time.’
Movement outside the door.
‘He’s here. Nice meeting you. Don’t touch the spider.’
The man and woman leave. Bryce Mackenzie enters. His bulk dominates the tiny dressing room. Analiese gets up from her chair.
‘Sit sit,’ Bryce says. ‘I won’t be long. And I doubt it would hold me anyway. Analiese Mackenzie. Partner of Wagner Corta. Care giver to Robson Corta. My adopted son. That’s not very loyal of you.’
‘It’s not disloyal to live my own life,’ Analiese says. ‘It’s not disloyal not to take sides.’
‘But you have taken sides. I’ll be brief. I have suffered a number of business setbacks recently. This is public knowledge. I’m in the process of reversing those. My strategy requires bargaining assets. Hostages, if you like.’
‘I’m just a musician,’ Analiese says. She would give anything, anything to be able to tear this black, prickling thing from her neck.
‘Not you,’ Bryce says. He laughs. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? No. I want Robson Corta. You have him. I want him. Give him to me.’
‘Wagner …’ Analiese stammers. ‘I can’t …’
‘I wouldn’t trust you to fix a martini, let alone bring me this kid. And he’s a slippy little bastard. He got away from me once in Meridian. Cost me a First Blade. Then again, he did have Denny Mackenzie fighting for him. I have people for this kind of thing. What I need from you is to clear space for them. Do you understand?’
‘You want me to get Wagner out of the way.’
‘Yes I do. Problem is: that word trust. Frankly, you are very far from staunch. You have betrayed the family before and I find it hard to put my trust in you. So what I need isn’t your loyalty, it’s your obedience.’
‘This …’ Analiese hooks a thumb towards the slowly-spasming thing hooked into her skin,
‘That? That’s just to get your attention. I’m going to send you something.’
Her familiar whispers, Message from Bryce Mackenzie. Windows open in Analiese’s vision: wide-angle, high viewpoint drone shots of streets, prospekts, tunnels. Each drone follows a figure: a middle-aged woman with striking long grey hair moving along a crowded prospekt, a young man taking tea with friends at a hotshop bar, a middle-aged, close-cropped woman leaning on the rail of a high balcony on one of Queen’s towers, surveying her marvellous city; a young woman running, a fair pony-tail swinging.
Mom, Ryan, Mom, Rowan.
‘You fuck.’
‘It’s agreed then?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Of course you have a choice.’ A secure contact appears on Analiese’s lens. ‘Arrange it, then let us know. We’ll take care of the rest.’ Bryce Mackenzie smiles, a thin tear in shining, straining skin. ‘My business is concluded. So there’s no more need for this.’ He holds out a hand and the thing leaps from Analiese’s neck on to his hand. He lets it run across his skin like a pet, turning his hand one way, then another to keep the vile thing in motion. It is glossy, hard and brittle and yet liquid at the same time; scurrying and intent, all legs and fangs. Analiese knows she will wake many nights, feeling the prickle of the little needle claws in her neck.
‘You wouldn’t have dared kill me with that thing,’ Analiese says. Defiance. Defiance is something.
‘I dare what I like. But correct: I wouldn’t have killed you. The spider’s armed with a non-lethal neurotoxin that would have fucked your nervous system so long and deep and hard you wouldn’t have been able to pick up that instrument of yours, let alone get a note out of it. Goodbye. I’m glad you agreed. Your friends are expecting you in the bar. You deserve a drink.’
For a big man he moves deftly, softly. Analiese is shaking. She can’t stop. She may never stop.
Demons.
As she departed, she returns, instrument in hand, the sole alightee at Theophilus’s small station. And there are her men; big man, little man. Big man tight, controlled, loud with dark emotions he thinks no one but he can see. Little man sombre and serious and failing to conceal how happy he is.
She almost gets back on the train. That would be the best thing, take herself away, far away from anyone and everyone who has ever known her. Change her name, edit her identity, erase her records, smash the setar.
They would still come.
Blow the lock, blow herself and her lovely men out into vacuum, all die in each other’s arms, brains burning red as each neuron guttered and was extinguished.
They would still come; by wing and wind and foot and knife-tip: Bryce Mackenzie’s assassins.
There is no good in anything she does.
Wagner scoops her up and she responds as she must, but her embrace is weak, her warmth cool, her kiss thin and treacherous. He will read it. When he is this far into the wolf, he sees things humans cannot.
‘Sorry, love, I’m beyond tired.’
Wagner carries her setar.
‘So,’ Robson says. ‘We listened to you. Me and Haider.’
‘What did you think?’
‘It was good. I think. I don’t really know if I can say anything about it because I didn’t really understand it. There were a lot of notes.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Wagner opens the door of the tiny apartment to a small table spread for a feast: the most intimate of celebrations: the meal in the home. There is hotshop food, and given food from friends and well-wishers, and food they have obviously made themselves. Analiese eats without thought or pleasure.
‘I’m not feeling great,’ she says, turning down iced ramen and white bean hummus. ‘Must be true what they say about the water in Queen. Old and dirty. Would you mind if I just went to bed? Sorry.’
She lies awake in the tiny cubby, listening to her men clear up, clean up, tidy away. She listens to their voices. They speak in Portuguese, which she still barely understands, and so she can strip their words of meaning and listen to them as pure sounds, as if they were instruments. Wagner is a clarinet, fluid and sonorous, sweet and musical. Robson’s voice is higher: piccolo, but she hears a crack in it, sudden drops into low notes.
She is sobbing. The bed shakes, she hopes Wagner and Robson
can’t feel it in the fabric of the home. She feigns sleep when Wagner comes up to join her. He slips in beside her, slides into his accustomed curl, dick pressed to her ass. She can’t bear it, she can’t bear the touch of his skin, his warmth, his body hair against her; the sweet wolf-reek of him.
When he is asleep she goes down to the living space. She tries entertainment but it won’t out-shout the guilt. She tries alcohol but it’s nauseating against the dread. She tries her music but her demon is powerless against this greater horror.
‘Hey.’
She hadn’t heard him get up. Wolves move softly.
‘Just getting some water.’
He knows it’s a lie. She knows she will never have another opportunity like this. That old Sun proverb: even the gods cannot help a woman who will not take an opportunity.
‘I’m still rattling around,’ Analiese says. ‘I can’t settle on anything, my body is wrecked but my mind is still running around shouting. I think I understand a little how you feel, when it changes.’
Wagner grimaces.
‘I know I don’t, fully – I can’t. And this will settle down in a day or two. With you …’
‘Don’t,’ Wagner says and Analiese hears him tear inside.
‘It’s turning light again, isn’t it?’ Analiese asks. She has been away for the whole time he has been in shadow. She knows his twitches, his discomforts, his small manias that build day on day as the Earth grows brighter. Shadow is turning once again to wolf.
‘Go, Wagner. It will kill you. It’s worse every time. I can see it. Robson can see it.’
‘Don’t bring Robson into this.’
‘You need the pack. It’s neurochemistry. You can go off the meds but it never goes away. It’s who you are, Wagner, it’s what you are. Go to them.’
‘It’s not safe!’
The sinews in his neck, the veins in his forehead betray the clenched emotion. It’s not anger, not rage – nothing so simple. It’s an entire other self, chained and caged and howling.
‘Just for one night, two nights. Meet them halfway, even. Look at yourself, Wagner. Can you manage five years of this? Every two weeks, when the Earth is round …’
‘I have to take care of Robson.’
‘It will kill you, Wagner. But before it kills you, it will tear your body apart, it will burn every organ and fill every artery with molten steel. It will smash your mind to a smear. How will you take care of Robson?’
‘I can’t go to Meridian. They’re looking for me.’
‘Wagner, if they wanted Robson, they’d already have him. Go. I will look after him. He’ll be fine. You are not. You look like death, my love.’
He shudders: the wolf within testing its chains.
‘How long would you need? Would one day be enough?’
Sweat runs thickly down his neck, his arms, his inner thighs.
‘It might.’
‘Two days?’
He shakes his head.
‘Too long.’
‘One day. Go. I will take care of Robson. Do you want to tell him or shall I?’
‘I will.’
‘Take the meds. I can’t bear to see you like this.’
‘I’m scared I might not come back.’
‘You’ll come back.’
His arms wrap around Analiese. She can’t bear it.
‘Do you think you can sleep?’ she asks.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Me neither.’
She settles on to the lounger. He settles his head in her lap. They both stare at the wall. She strokes his thick, black hair.
‘You won’t hurt him, will you?’
She asked that when she called the address Bryce gave her backstage at the Xian Xinghai centre. She asked it again when she was told where and when the operatives would arrive. She asks it a third time, at the door of her apartment, to the two men come to take Robson away.
‘He won’t be hurt, ma’am. He’s a valuable asset.’
A moon man and a Jo Moonbeam. Skill and muscle. They are dressed in candy-striped suits, big lapels, wide ties, pleated pants, broad-banded fedoras, pointed shoes. They could not look more like contract thugs.
‘He’s asleep.’
The plan is to take him in his sleep. The Jo Moonbeam – a broad, gentle-faced Fijian – calls a box-bot into the room.
‘Oh,’ Analiese says. ‘You’re taking him out in that? I hadn’t thought about how you were going to get him out.’
‘We can’t really carry him, can we?’ the second man says. He has a Queen of the South accent.
The Jo Moonbeam opens the lid. The cargo space is generous and well padded.
‘Just until we get to the railcar,’ the moon man says.
They sent him off together, hugging in the airlock, waving as the locks closed, still waving as the railcar moved off though they knew that Wagner in the shuttle could not see.
Let us know when you get to Meridian.
Against right and reason, Analiese had eventually slept, the night of the betrayal. That same night Wagner must have taken the meds, for when she woke she found him prowling the kitchen area in nothing but skin, trying to find mint and glasses for tea, feral and alert, sensitive and aware in ways beyond human.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Howling.’ He grinned. And he locked eyes with her and her heart rose and she smiled and nodded her head which was all the invitation he needed and they fucked fast and fierce on the lounger.
‘Robson!’ she hissed.
‘He’s thirteen, he’ll sleep until noon,’ Wagner said.
The arrangements were swiftly made. Some risks were not worth taking. He would not notify the Meridian pack until he arrived at their door. He would close down Dr Light and run a dummy familiar. He would stay one night and return on the 17:00 Equatorial Express. Communications would be kept to a minimum, except for a call to say he had arrived.
Each carefully planned stage was a nail through Analiese’s elbow, wrist, knee, hip. Neck.
Robson wouldn’t go to sleep, the little fuck. He generally keeled over around midnight but tonight he would not roll into bed. One o’clock. One thirty.
‘I’m getting really tired, Robson.’
‘You go to bed. I’m not ready yet.’
Two o’clock. Two thirty.
She had already sent two delaying messages to the agents. She found excuses to keep herself awake: a new piece on the historical musicological relationship of the setar and the Uighur satar, a recently released terrestrial recording of the Ensemble Chemiraani, a heated exchange on a Persian music group. She dreaded a cold war of nerves with Robson, each determined to see the other off to sleep.
Three twenty he rolled on to his back.
‘I’m off.’
Analiese waited for the first growling snore before she called the agents of Mackenzie Helium.
‘Don’t hurt him.’
‘I promise. Iloilo.’
The big Pacifican moves to the mezzanine stairs.
‘Analiese?’
He’s there in the bedroom door, sheet pulled around him. Skinny and groggy.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Fuck,’ says the moon man. He touches his cufflink. Dark motes fly up in Robson’s face. He drops the sheet, reels back and goes down in a flail of limbs.
‘Robson!’ Analiese shouts but the second kidnapper has him and carries him as light as an insect down the stairs.
‘You have the craziest dreams,’ the moon man says. ‘So I hear.’ The Fijian lays Robson gently in the cargo box, curled up in foetal position.
‘No,’ Analiese says. ‘Wait …’ The box, it’s a coffin. It’s death.
‘We have a contract,’ the moon man says.
The Fijian smiles and closes the lid. The
bot trundles out into the corridor.
‘Oh yes,’ the moon man says. ‘One last thing.’ The blade is fast, sure and strong, punched through Analiese’s neck from one side to the other. She sprays blood, hisses, her hands flap. The knife holds her upright. ‘That’s for fucking a Corta.’ He rips the knife free. Analiese Mackenzie falls in gouts of red heart-blood.
The moon man cleans his blade and reverently reholsters it inside his jacket. He steps back from the flood of red.
‘Remember Ironfall.’
Haider takes two teas at El Gato Encantado but still no Robson. A ping to Joker comes back empty: off-net. He could be free-running: some new move or stunt. Parkour requires fierce, pure concentration: there is no place for pings and notifications a hundred metres up the heat-exchange shaft. More tea, though his mouth is as dry as if he had vaped five grams of skunk.
‘Where’s your little friend?’ Jo-Jee asks.
Haider scowls. He has never liked Jo-Jee and his patronising comments. His money is as good as anyone else’s in this hotshop. He flicks Jianyu behind the counter some bitsies and goes in search of Robson. Theophilus is not a large city and the sites where a traceur can sharpen their skills smaller still. The air-shaft, the pressurised-storage laager, the power and water ring, the purification system where they met: nothing. Last Haider visits the central core: Robson’s favourite. Haider still can’t watch him on the zig-zag fifty metres down to the sump: side to side to side to side, turning, flipping, spinning in the air to land and immediately kick off again. Speed is important to Robson. Surviving is to Haider.
Solveig calls Joker again. No answer.
House then.
This isn’t right. Liquid from under the door. He steps back. The liquid is tacky and sticky and red on his pure white sneakers. Blood.
‘Solveig! Call help!’
‘Good morning, Haider,’ says the door. ‘You’re on the welcome list. Please come in.’
The door opens.
TWENTY
The impacts rock the apartment, conversation-pit to bed-pods. Haider is out of his bed, dropping into shoes, pulling on a hoodie, transferring all his local data to network: the standard impact/moonquake/depressurisation drill. He slides down the ladder into the living space.