Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  By this time a kind of welcome party had managed to get itself together. Two human guards in full body armour with machine pistols and one of the legitimate cyborgs she'd never seen before stood just behind the open flower of the security shutter. Their weapons were all aimed at her, though they held fire. One of them hadn't been able to fit his gas mask properly and it dangled down the side of a handsome square-jawed face. She stepped up and put it on for him, clipping the tag to his helmet and giving it a pat. It bought a moment of surprised stillness in which she saw herself reflected in the dark shield that covered his eyes; her red hair spiked with rain, her violet eyes beneath that canny, her dress plastered over her, glittering as she stood taller than she should in her big black combat boots.

  "I'm here to see the gaffer," she said, stepping back and taking a more critical look at her reflection as if in a vanity mirror. No, there was nothing to be done about any of it. She was a complete mess.

  The more efficient of the two guards radioed down for instructions. His voice was shaky and he'd gone slightly rigid all over. Lila ignored him and made herself look at the person she really didn't want to see.

  The android was a fifty-years-in-the-future version of herself, or what she would have been if she'd lived those fifty years and undergone no aetheric interventions. Clearly human, clearly female, she no longer bore much resemblance to who she'd once been. She looked like a hairless sculpture of a thickset woman with rudimentary, idealised features. Her skin was dark grey and shiny with the hardness of marble. Even her eyes were made of the same substance. The gun at the end of her forearm was a heavy, short weapon, the empty hole at the end of her finger promising significantly more harm than the humans' guns. She was wearing a green camo uniform, like the guards, the sleeves and leg cuffs rolled. It looked like someone had dressed an unpainted plastic model and posed it for an army shop front. As in Lila's case, the boots were the feet were the boots. On the breast pocket a name tag read Bentley. At Bentley's neck a thin nine-carat gold chain lay, with a small girlish pendant in the shape of a hollow heart hanging from it. Lila's own heart constricted slightly.

  Don't be afraid, Zal'd said. When he'd understood the change was to be total and permanent, the machine consuming every cell, he hadn't batted an elfin or demonic eyelash. She was his girl, no matter what she was made of. But then, it had been just a few months. Not decades.

  Lila saw Bentley staring at her feet and looked down. Buckles and straps and the semblance of leather to the kneecap were real enough to look 100 percent convincing. Above them pale skin with last year's tan rose as if it were flesh and disappeared four inches above the knee into the sopping, tawdry skirt of Tatty's dress. The dress had a mind of its own, Lila'd discovered, and was able to make itself any way. Today it wanted to look like crud for some reason. There was not a trace of the impeccable stitching, the gold, silver, jewels, and scales of its onetime magnificence, when Zal had given it to her, ignorant of its history. Then it had been just a gift from a lover, some nice thing to wear instead of all that boring black-and-camo combat gear. Of course it was rare, soaked in magic, and the price of a king's ransom, but he could afford it on rock-star fortunes, and somehow, he'd thought it might save her.

  The dress had saved her ass against the baddest faeries in town. Truthfully, it was probably the dress that had got the agreement from the Hunter to hoover up the Mothkin and save all their butts from an endless sleep. She still didn't know why or even how exactly, and the thing irritated and spooked her equally. She was never sure if it belonged to her or the other way around, but it was Zal's gift and that was the one reason that prevented her taking it off and burying it under several hundred tons of rock.

  The cyborg continued staring at her legs. Lila stared back at those grey eyes, her jaw starting to jut, and saw the head duck suddenly, as if ashamed.

  Mercifully at that moment a second squad of mixed soldiers and officials appeared through opening blast doors, and Lila found herself face-to-face with a person she assumed was the present head of the Otopian Secret Service. They hadn't met and Lila was permanently disconnected from the World Tree, so she really was just going on the air of authority and the grimly controlled yet thoroughly pissed-off expression.

  The man in the suit was tall and broad shouldered, dark but greying at the temples, his immaculate and conformist grooming marked oddly with a surge of upper lip hair-a bandit's moustache. "Temple Greer," he announced himself, taking a solid stance and placing his hands together in front of him. He kept his weight back as he looked her over, and said insouciantly as his gaze flicked back to her face. "You must be Lila Black."

  Lila shrugged and smiled sweetly, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, admitting it. She'd already decided to give nothing to them, and that included conversational openers.

  "You're under arrest," he said, his face impassive as though she were not very interesting. Meanwhile, more armed people came into the room and started to fill up the corridors. She heard something heavy land on the roof and more feet getting out of that.

  The grey-and-black shiny bodies of other androids oiled into the corners, slipping easily through the crowd. Their guns were bigger. They all bore the same plastic look of humanoid uniformity, some male, some female, but without distinctive faces. Each wore fatigues, some with ammunition belts or other devices attached. Finally she was surrounded by quite a throng, a space of clear carpet one metre wide around her. Greer faced her from its twelve o'clock position.

  She missed Tath. She missed the imp. She missed Zal. Where someone should have said something sarcastic and smart about the situation, now she had only the endless windblown susurrus of the Signal.

  "It's like you knew I was coming," Lila said, rather too loudly. "Thanks for all turning out. I feel almost moved."

  Greer stared at her with genuine dislike. "You should be grateful you're not dead."

  "I am. Every day," she assured him. "As is Teazle Sikarza, I'm sure. I can barely imagine the thrill of his existence, living under a Legal Execution Order back home in Bathshebat. And I understand he's got you to thank for that. Was that a plan to halve the demon population on your part? Pretty clever if it was. Pretty dumb if it wasn't. He'll be pissed when he finds out, and since he got back from Faeryland he's been a bit ... hasty in his judgement." She wondered where Malachi was and hoped he had the brains to stay out of it.

  In her head the machine whispered to itself, flipping digits, switching charges. She wondered if the others heard it too. Maybe they knew every word ... word was not the right word ... maybe they understood what it was saying. Perhaps it was telling them her secrets. If it did, they showed no sign.

  She shook her head and found Greer looking at her with widened, angry eyes because she'd been zoning out in what, for him, must be an important moment.

  She shrugged. "Do your guys hear all the background chatter, or is that just me?" She waved her finger in circles next to her ear to illustrate and glanced around at the various androids with a questioning face and an encouraging smile.

  "Your business isn't asking the questions," Greer said flatly. "Answering them is."

  "Oh, because I thought maybe the more advanced a machine you became the more it might make sense. At least, I got that impression off the rogues who approached me. I have to say, they weren't too much friendlier than you. Y'all gotta work on your people skills, geekfiends." Lila let her smile stay airy and uncomplicated. "Anyway, as long as you don't mind the fact that pretty much everything you use to protect the homeland security is in constant communication with unknown entities at unspecified places, I guess I can live with the mystery."

  Greer actually looked uncomfortable for a second. Lila wasn't sure exactly why, but it was good enough for her. She held out her wrists together in front of her. "Better cuff me then. Or do you want to talk about ghosts and stuff? The news these days is full of such scary stories."

  His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. He made the smallest motion of his hea
d left and right and said quietly, "Get out."

  The room emptied, bodies flowing through doors like water down a plughole. Within a few seconds they were alone. A moment or two later she heard a soft padding in the hall, and Malachi appeared, slinking with a deliberate, insouciant slowness. Greer glanced at him with a scowl as he came through the doorway.

  "Shut the door."

  Malachi pushed it closed and stood, folding his hands in front of him. He'd taken off his sunglasses, and his orange eyes blazed, their cat pupils wide, his expression a combination of grim and bored that made Lila want to smile. She turned her gaze back to Greer with pleasant expectation to let him know he could dig his own hole now and bury himself in it.

  To her surprise the man relaxed, his stiff posture and bullish pose softening as he released his arms from their brace position and loosened his big shoulders. He opened his jacket, flicked the sides back, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. His head tilted slightly to one side and he made a show of loosening his jaw. "The trouble is, Black, you're right and I'm right and the world is a wrong, sorry place to be right in."

  "Is this good cop?" she asked. The corner of Malachi's mouth twitched in a grin as Greer looked back over his shoulder at him and then gazed back at Lila.

  "Temple Greer is a man of distinction among humans," Malachi said to her. "He is straight about his lies." He made the faintest nod.

  She tilted her head too, to show she was still listening.

  "What I told Malachi to tell you was to bring you here," Greer said easily. "It's true too, but that's just a sideline. We could play cat-andmouse games another month or two and piss each other off some more, but you're fifty years late and time's running out for all of us so I hope you'll overlook the methods. I know there's nothing holding you to the agency now, if there ever was. I don't approve of what happened here in the past"-he glanced over her, managing to convey that he was referring to her machine alterations without making it look sleazy"but it's ancient history now. Here you are. Here they are. Here they are ..." And he jerked his head in Malachi's direction. "And whatever the government likes to say to the press about human security, we both know that's a horse that ran out of the barn a long time gone. So I'm not looking to bolt any doors here. We used to do that in your day. Now we're more of a ..." He hesitated and looked back at Malachi, for all the world as if they were some kind of tag team.

  "Centre for Supernatural Crisis Management," Malachi said around his huge canine teeth as if he were tearing up the words. His dislike of the term was so obvious it made her grin.

  Greer gave a short laugh at what was clearly the office joke, "Yeah. Anyway, my offer to you stands. You're unique and I need you to help me do this job. In return I promise you can have the uneasy feelings, stomach ulcers, and sleepless nights that I enjoy, knowing the world is no safer nor better for your existence. But you'll be in charge of some miserable twisted little bit of it, for a while. I can throw in a few henchmen, offices, labs, access to top-secret information that I probably shouldn't have myself, and an off-peak pass to one of the secondrate hotelino health clubs. What do you say?"

  Lila was smiling. "I appreciate your humour. But to my main point again. Teazle Sikarza didn't murder Madame Des Loupes. I don't believe she's dead. You're putting it about that he did. Your forensics helped the demons convict him."

  Greer held up his hands in a placatory surrender pose. "Slow it down some. First of all, we did send out a team to the investigation, at the request of their chief coroner. Part of one of those itchy-scratchy back exchanges. We needed help with some things; they wanted independent verification...."

  "So they could have an absentee conviction and an immediate sentence," Lila said, folding her arms.

  "Yeah. That. Got to love that legal system they have. Sure is efficient." His gaze became dreamy, as if he were contemplating paradise.

  "But you weren't interested in him for any other reason? You didn't want to involve me in something that would be likely to bring me leaping out of the woodwork into full view."

  Greer reached into the top pocket of his jacket and brought out a small carving on a leather thong. He held it out to her, but she could see it fine and didn't take it. "You know what this is?"

  "It's a Happy Fetish. The demons make them; they sell them at Annie's jewels and other stores like that. Twenty bucks each." She quoted the label, "`Likely to encourage good feelings and general zest for life. Product not guaranteed."'

  "Yeah. Ever since they came out they sell like hotcakes. My daughter got me this one for Father's Day. Kinda ugly, big eyes, too many tusks, so I don't wear it. And then there's the small problem of the demon inside it."

  This time their gazes met and held for a few seconds.

  "You see," Greer said, rewrapping the dead demon in its thong and slipping it back into his pocket, "we know about this, but we aren't allowed to say. We know about the moth-touched, the loony luna-people and their sleep and their dreams. We know about the Woken, thanks to Zal for those-only took ten years for his efforts to show fruit. And we know about the Hunter's Chosen, though we can't talk about them. And we know about the Hunter's Children." He smiled broadly at last as he saw her real surprise, her puzzlement, her confusion.

  She looked at Malachi and saw his serious nod as he answered what was uppermost in her mind first. "Zal's music made a lot of people free," he said.

  She missed Zal suddenly and so precisely that she could feel the shape of the emptiness that had taken his place.

  "It was the quiet revolution," Greer agreed, his face mild for a moment, inward-looking on a personal memory with affection. Lila clung to looking at him, waiting for the tears in her eyes to disappear. "Clear vision. Nothing more." Then his gaze met hers with the acuity of a laser. "I'm grateful for that. All of us who listened are grateful. But the Chosen and the Children, well, they're another matter. And the demons. I wish I knew their game. I wish I knew Teazle's game. I wish I knew what happened to him in Faeryland."

  The last line was an appeal. Lila didn't respond to it directly. She didn't feel able to, and not just because she couldn't have given him an answer. "We all changed there," she said, and then it was she and Malachi who were sharing the look, alone in the room together, worlds away, lost in time.

  Then it was her turn to get sharp. "Which doesn't explain your interest in his death, Mister Greer. And doesn't excuse your part in placing me in the position of executioner over my own husband."

  Greer frowned congenially. "Do you love him?"

  Lila looked at him with a cool and considering stare.

  Greer shrugged. "C'mon, we know what he looks like, what he is, what he does, and for all the add-ons you're still at heart a human girl, right? I mean, I know the story, Beauty and the Beast, and if you knew my life you'd be right to think I'm not exactly an expert in relationships but really-do you love him?"

  Lila turned her head the other way and looked at him from the other eye and then turned her head straight and deepened the fold of her arms. "Seeing as you ask so nicely, Mr. Greer, I'll answer as honestly as I can. If you knew my life you'd be right to think that I'm not exactly an expert in relationships. Teazle and I were never even friends-we never had a date, we never went to dinner, we never watched the sun go down together, we don't share any interests as far as I can tell. I say tomato and he says how high. The one thing we do is look out for each other's ass. I don't know how that started exactly. We don't even talk. But if you think I am going to try and kill him for any reason other than that he tries to kill me first, then you're making a serious mistake."

  Greer smiled and nodded. "You ain't the first woman I've met who's that difficult to get a straight answer out of on the subject, but seeing as the first woman I met like that is my wife I'm gonna take your answer as a yes."

  Lila scowled and opened her mouth, but Greer threw his hand up. "Lemme finish. She's an ex-Mrs. Greer now, though that's not saying much. My point in asking was because I care about these things
and I know others do to. Most of the time in the past this shitty-ass department treated people like accessories and look what happened. You, the other androids, the rogues ... It's a mess. Plenty of humans left who still think that institutions and governments have to be run as if they were computer programmes, but thanks to your elf man and his record collection there are plenty that don't. I admit we helped put your demon up for grabs, but you have to see he was headed there by himself in any case. I was just taking the chance to get an in with the demons while it was hot. For what it's costing you, I apologise."

  Lila narrowed her eyes and nostrils and exhaled slowly. "You are a beguiling mover, for the head of the most important agency in the world."

  Greer grinned and gave his shoulders a little jaunt. "Think so?"

  "Almost fey," she said. "Now what are you going to do about Teazle?"

  "Sweet nothing," he replied, relaxing his weight onto one leg and glancing at Malachi, who had been observing them with detached cool from his place near the door. "Hear that? Fey."

  Malachi made a noise halfway between a purr and a growl. It rumbled the floor, and both Lila and Greer looked at him with some surprise. "You are the only reason I am still here," he said to Greer. "And no fey blood in you, though you are susceptible to dust. Just keep listening to the Light Album and you'll do well enough." He was referring to Zal's last musical collection. His tone left no doubt that his feeling about the humans was merely a hairsbreadth from contempt. "I didn't care for my part in this setup. So let's finish it. You said you had some ideas worth hearing about Teazle. We want to hear them."

  Greer nodded and took a deep breath, let it out, and glanced at the two of them. "What bothers me about the situation is why the demons want him dead. I know there's the power angle, but that's not enough to drive their legal system into a corrupt means of getting rid of him. You know how much store the demons place in integrity. And I don't see why they haven't got together to finish him off either, but I hear that's to do with aetheric power things I don't understand. My point-"