redRobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  And if they weren’t armed to the teeth they were still a hell of lot better-equipped than his group.

  ‘Your group?’ Mai snorted. ‘You think half the people here wouldn’t slit your throat in the night if they got the chance?’

  No, he didn’t. Without intending to Axl glanced over to where Kate crouched, retying the laces of her Caterpillars while she pretended not to be trying to listen in.

  ‘She’d be first in the line,’ Mai’s voice was regretful. ‘You hurt her, you know. . . And just because you’re broken doesn’t mean that everyone else is ... Of course,’ Mai nodded at Kate, ‘it doesn’t mean they’re not either.’

  She was gone before Axl could reply, her hand reaching out to stroke Kate’s cheek as she went past, leaving Kate staring after her with something like disbelief in her blushing face.

  * * * *

  ‘Aren’t you going to stop her?’ Kate’s voice grated on Axl’s thoughts. He was about to ask stop who? But he didn’t need to. Mai was walking steadily towards a pile of corpses while ahead of her grey shadows raised their heads, as if they could pick up her scent over the sickening miasma of rotting bodies.

  Axl grabbed his snubPup and rolled to his feet, pounding after Mai. 148 shots to a magazine and he had one magazine rammed up through the butt of the Browning and a spare tapped alongside. About seven and half seconds of full-on killing time, not like he really had bullets to spare.

  Only he didn’t need the gun. Axl didn’t even need to pull back the ratchet that jacked the first shot into the breech, though he did it anyway. It was the combat equivalent of sucking his thumb.

  ‘Shhhh,’ Mai hissed as he ran up behind her, pumped with fear and ready to hit the ground and roll, taking out the three wolves directly ahead. ‘You’ll scare them.’

  ‘Scare them?’

  Mai nodded and knelt briefly beside a corpse, closing the eyes on the body of a man who had one leg chewed off at the knee and was wearing his small intestines draped round his groin like a withered grass skirt. ‘They’re cleaners,’ Mai said reaching for a grey shadow. Instead of taking her hand off at the wrist, the wolf whined like a puppy and pushed its narrow skull up into her palm.

  ‘Fucking great,’ said Axl, ‘they’re all God’s creatures and you’re fucking St Francis.’ He stared at the broken body of a child, little more than ragged scraps of dark flesh on bones picked nearly clean.

  ‘You like this?’ Axl asked.

  ‘I don’t have a problem with it,’ said Mai. She stopped a few seconds later, put her head up and sniffed the air like one of her shadows. ‘Too much,’ she insisted, ‘too much for the horses. Cut them free ...' Behind him, Axl could see Rinpoche already slitting straps that fastened on saddles and slicing through bridles and reins.

  ‘That’s...'

  ‘A good idea,’ Mai told him. ‘Unless you plan to be a sitting target?’ She smiled grimly. ‘As opposed to a walking one…’ There wasn’t an answer to that.

  ‘Does all this really make sense to you?’ Axl asked Mai, feeling so tired he found it hard to think.

  She nodded, smiled broadly and pointed to a blond toddler lying naked on a stone slab, his small arms and legs broken to give the vultures a head start.

  * * * *

  It was Mai, not Axl, who led the exhausted group towards the centre of the charnel ground, walking ahead oblivious to the increasing number of bodies and their stink. The wolves stayed strung out in a line along either side of the party as if they were acting as outriders.

  Mai appeared not to notice the wolves, except when one thrust its wet nose against her hand, but then she didn’t seem aware of anything really, apart from Father Sylvester’s glass blade warm between her breasts and a soft voice muttering in her head, and much of the time she didn’t even notice that. It was the daydreams that went with those mutterings that made her gasp, shake her head and shiver…

  Unrelated, intense but not mine. At least, Mai didn’t think they were hers. What she liked best was the feeling of calm so deep it made her relax just to think about it. She really liked that. Liked the way her heart slowed and the knot in her stomach untied itself and faded away.

  What surprised Mai most was the discovery that just because Kate had told her how lucky she was to be brought to Samsara didn’t mean it was a lie.

  ‘Mai?’ She felt rather than heard the question. At first she thought it came from the silver monkey now circling overhead higher than the vultures. Mai couldn’t really see Rinpoche, not by looking, but sometimes he was in her head and other times she was the one looking out through his eyes. She liked that, too.

  Most of all, she liked watching herself as a tiny dot who moved slowly across a great expanse of rough grass, skirting bushes and small ponds. Mezzanine, said a voice in her head. It’s a mezzanine between Samsara’s broad central valley and the high passes. But she didn’t know that word and no sense came attached to it so that didn’t help her much, not that Mai minded.

  ‘Mai?' There was that question again, the one she’d forgotten she’d been asked. The kid looked round her, saw nobody speaking and wondered if it was one of the wolves. Then told herself not to be stupid.

  ‘Stupid is good if it helps. Crazy is better… But, do I look like a wolf?’

  The bald man sitting ahead of her on an altar was wrapped in a thin orange robe. His mouth didn’t open and there was nothing to say he was the one who had spoken, but she knew it was him from the smile on his face. And besides… she just knew.

  ‘Like a wolf?’ said Mai, ‘No, you look like you should be cold.’

  The man laughed. It sounded like echoes fading inside a prayer drum.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Lo-fi/Fidelity

  Slap bass, the real thing… impressively fuzzy analogue. Slow as a heartbeat, only looping four notes not two, repeated endlessly. Axl couldn’t remember the song it had been stripped from but he recalled the original fly poster. A blonde Scandinavian framed topless against a pantone sky, white flannel shorts pulled up so tight they probably explained the idiot grin on her face.

  He hadn’t liked the track back then.

  Axl watched Kate approach, keeping his own face impassive. It was the first time in two days she’d come near him, and Axl had long since stopped trying to draw her aside and explain. Mainly because he wasn’t too sure explain what? And besides what on earth made him imagine for a minute that she’d believe him? Axl wouldn’t have done if he was Kate. Hell, half the time he didn’t believe himself…

  As rest stops went, here was better than anywhere else they’d found and infinitely preferable to where they’d been a day and a half before, sitting by an altar as Mai wandered aimlessly closing the eyes of the dead.

  But a whole day’s light had gone and, because he hadn’t told them, none of the group understood why Axl refused to leave the slope above the woods that edged Samsara’s central valley. And when Ketzia had forced herself to ask him two hours earlier, he’d just snapped that he was watching time go by.

  Axl stood, Kate opened her mouth and the slap bass slid into silence, a straight fade.

  ‘You can’t take Mai back.’ Kate didn’t bother to pretend the conversation was about anything else. Nor did she slide into it gently. Nothing but worry for Mai would have made her cross the patch of grass from where she sat with Louis and Ketzia to where Axl sat alone.

  He could, quite easily. Provided neither of them got killed first. Whether he should was a different question, but that wasn’t what she’d asked.

  ‘I can,’ said Axl demolishing half a tiny apple with a single bite. They had food now. Two rabbits killed with a slingshot by Tukten. And sour pippins from a row of trees that looked as if they’d once been cultivated but had long since been allowed to grow wild. ‘Quite easily.’

  They were watching her, the others. And it was obvious Kate realised the fact from the tension whipcording her neck and the way her fingers wrapped into fists that pushed hard into her hips. If Axl hadn’t kn
own better he’d have said Kate was doing her best to stop herself from shaking.

  ‘She’s ill.’ It was as close as Kate had come to pleading and closer than she liked.

  ‘I know.’

  Mai was, too. Shakes like he’d never seen and night sweats that left her skin mottled and slick. The fever had come on immediately after the charnel ground and Axl was trying very hard to ignore the thought that she’d infected herself while tidying the corpses. Either that, or she’d caught some disease saying goodbye to her shadows when the wolves began to slobber all over her face.

  ‘And she’s a child,’ Kate hissed at him. They’d been there before.

  ‘That child,’ said Axl, ‘is a kinderwhore.’ He flipped out his hand to grip Kate’s wrist, stopping her from turning away. Here was somewhere they’d been as well.

  ‘Sit down,’ Axl snapped at Louis, then jerked his head at Tukten who’d dropped all the firewood he’d been collecting except for a large branch which he held like a club. ‘You too.’

  Neither moved.

  ‘You can sit down,’ said Axl, ‘or I can kick seven shades of shit out of you, do it in public and sell tickets ...' Both the boy and Louis sat down. And why not, thought Axl. Those were the words that always worked for Black Jack.

  ‘The child was kidnapped, dumped in the middle of fucking nowhere and has spent the last month spreading her legs in the hope of getting out again. Don’t even think of trying to guilt me.’

  Axl left Kate standing there. He didn’t need to look back to know she was really shaking now.

  * * * *

  Mai was sitting in a huddle under a small oak tree, arranging the dried cups of last year’s acorns into intricate mandalas. Axl tried to ignore her wet trousers as he dropped to a squat in front of her, much as he tried to ignore the puddle of urine that kept expanding around his boots into a fractal-edged map, darkening a slope crusted with acorn cups and rotted leaves.

  The girl smelt of sweat and a sweetness that made Axl think of disease until he realised it was only the remains of a purple flower that lay stripped of its petals in her lap.

  ‘People want to kill you,’ Mai said softly. She might have been talking to Axl, but equally well her comment could have been to the flower dying in her lap. She glanced up and Axl realised she wasn’t talking to the flower.

  ‘Everyone has enemies.’ Fortune cookie stuff and about as true. Some people had friends.

  ‘Not enemies who intend to kill everyone around you too.’

  Axl paused to wonder what they were actually talking about. ‘Everyone?’ He asked Mai.

  ‘Ketzia, Louis, Tukten… Kate.’

  ‘You too?’ Axl asked quickly. Not wanting to think about the last name on her list.

  ‘No, not me. But definitely you.’ Mai concentrated on the PaxForce conscripts in the woods far below. The language they spoke was odd, a hill dialect not Spanish, but she had no trouble with what it meant. Its sense just fed through to her along with the pictures.

  ‘That man,’ Mai said.

  ‘The Colonel.’ Axl sighed. He’d been hoping he was wrong, that they weren’t talking about the same thing but they were. ‘All of the soldiers from the village?’

  Mai paused, held up ten fingers and then her eyes glazed over and she was gone.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Axl said, standing up. He was going to have to talk to Kate after all.

  * * * *

  ‘We’ve got problems.’

  Kate looked up from stuffing twigs into a small fire. And as Axl watched her watching him, he tried not to think of all the others watching them. For someone meant to keep to the shadows he’d been doing a spectacularly bad job. She weighed up his words as she looked for the catch.

  ‘Mai?’ She asked at last.

  ‘Yeah, that. . . And something else,’ Axl gestured at the fire. He wasn’t quite asking Kate’s permission to sit but he wasn’t far off. As close as he was likely to get to an apology anyway. And when Kate had finished looking surprised, she nodded.

  Inside Axl’s head, the soundtrack added strings which died abruptly as his adrenaline levels soared. He got steady drum and bass on their way down.

  Part of him wanted to tell Kate that PaxForce were waiting in the woods. Somehow he never quite got round to it.

  ‘Kate.’ The single word was too hard, too abrupt.

  She did that look, the half frightened/half aggressive one he was beginning to recognise.

  ‘There was a mosquito,’ said Axl, then stopped. Lost for his next line. Same as it ever was. There was enough room in the silence that followed for either of them to stand up and walk away. Neither one did.

  Her frown was puzzled, her eyes watchful. Without knowing, she twisted her mouth and bit at the inside of her bottom lip. That was another tic of hers Axl recognised, the one that said, Okay. I’m concentrating…

  ‘Look,’ Axl said into the silence. ‘You remember after… ?’

  ‘After what?’ Kate was about to say and then realised what Axl was talking about. She froze. ‘Remember?’ She couldn’t forget and not from lack of trying. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, ‘I made a mistake. What about it?’

  ‘The mosquito.’ Reaching with clumsy fingers into the side pocket of his coat, Axl extracted a tiny tangled mess of chitin and gossamer-fine optic fibre. Even in the fading light and covered with grit its solar-powered wings were flecked with iridescence.

  ‘PaxForce-issue,’ Axl said. He held it out to her but Kate wouldn’t take it.

  ‘How do I know it isn’t yours?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  Very slowly Kate reached out for the bug, her shaking fingers closing around the tangled remains. They both knew she was trying to take the bug without touching his proffered hand.

  Kate took the dead insect and squinted at it. Made by machines or once actually alive, she had no idea how to tell. Not her area of expertise. She used to have people to do that stuff for her. What the fuck do I actually know? Kate thought crossly, turning the tiny bug over in her hand.

  She was meant to be considering what she’d revealed to him back then, doing grown-up things like working out the possible political impact of her indiscretions, Kate knew that: but what was really looping through her brain was the memory of Axl naked above her. That and the absolute certainty she’d been screaming by the end.

  Well, if not actually screaming, then certainly not silent. And all the time…

  ‘You told me about Mai, remember.’ If Axl noticed Kate had gone red he didn’t say anything, just waited.

  ‘And Joan,’ Kate said.

  Axl nodded. ‘Joan, the dreams, those memory beads.’ He stopped, hesitated and told the truth anyway. ‘I came here to get you. But after you told me about Mai, I knew she was key. The only question was, who’d get there first…’

  ‘Why did it have to be you?' There was such upset in Kate’s question that Axl winced, an actual physical flinch. And then he told her…

  An hour was what it took, an hour Axl didn’t have, while the others fidgeted and Mai hummed under her oak tree and PaxForce troops crouched in the woods below certain in their knowledge that there was only one trail down to the valley floor.

  ‘That’s the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’ Axl nodded. It wasn’t, of course, not the whole of it. That would involve telling Kate facts he wasn’t prepared to let go. Strange as it seemed, he trusted the woman and, now his decision was made, he had no intention of being responsible for her doing something stupidly noble… Like refusing to go home to Cocheforet.

  Kate didn’t need to know about the timecode, the soundtrack, the whole of Rinpoche’s tatty little bag of tricks that locked him into the countdown for the Nuncio’s cruiser. Any more than knowing about the Colonel’s troops dug into the edge of the woods would be useful ... In fact, Axl told Kate nothing that might complicate what he was about to do.

  ‘I’m letting Mai go,’ Axl said.

  He expected shock, a flare of hope, outright suspicion�
�� What he got was a slow nod of the head. It seemed Kate was ahead of him even in this.

  ‘The Cardinal will kill you.’ They both understood she meant it literally.

  Axl shrugged. No would be a lie and Yes didn’t bear thinking about. About the best he could hope for was maybe.

  ‘You think you put her over the edge,’ Kate said. ‘But it was Father Sylvester who led her there. No,’ Kate shook her head, ‘he dragged her there, bound and with her lips sewn together—and I gave the order…’

  Guilt, it was a wonderful thing.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mai.’ Axl pushed himself up off the ground. Both knees were locked from squatting by the fire and pins and needles threaded through both ankles but Axl felt none of it. In fact, he was working very hard at feeling nothing at all.

  Kate didn’t move. ‘You coming?’ Axl asked over his shoulder, and he walked off without looking back.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  13.38.34

  They heard the girl puking before they reached her.

  ‘I’m scared she’s dying.’ Kate’s voice was raw, as if she was the one who’d been vomiting over the tree roots.

  ‘No,’ Axl said firmly. ‘Rinpoche wouldn’t allow it.’ Both Kate and he knelt in front of the girl and waited for her huge pupils to focus.

  ‘13.38.34…’ She told Axl. Mai even did the dots between numbers.

  He nodded. ‘I’m looking for Rinpoche,’ said Axl.

  ‘Beloved?’ She stared up at him, dark eyes as empty as the Big Black.

  ‘The silver monkey ... I need to talk to him. You know where he is?’

  ‘Up.’ The Japanese girl pointed directly into the night, sky.

  Yeah, thought Axl, surprise me…

  ‘How do you know?’ Kate demanded, voice uncertain.

  ‘We’re watching. You’re small and suddenly whoosh…’ Mai smacked her hand into the dirt, ‘you’re big.’

  Radical focus shift, most vidSats came with it built-in except for the really cheap Italian ones. Watching not listening or he’d have been down already. Besides, Mai probably wasn’t looking at them, not really, she’d spliced into some feed. Actually… Axl ran through what he knew about human optics and decided it amounted to the same.