Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  It was surreal to her, to move so fast and smoothly, with such quiet emptiness where the engine's roar used to be. Now only the wind battered her ears and face with its noise and wrenched her hair in every direction. A lot of people had bikes like hers, but they rode them in armour and she heard the guidance systems doing a lot of the driving. The pretty coloured bubble cars that had no drivers held an astonishing array of people and activities. She saw a couple at a table lit with candles speeding in the fast lane, eating dinner off fine china, clinking crystal glasses. In other pods children flung themselves at the windshields, plastering noses and lips to it, making faces. A girl sunbathed in a bikini while her mother lay in the front doing some kind of exercise class. Boys played console games, their feet sticking out of the window, socks shimmying in the draft. Occasionally something that looked like a sports car would shark through the lanes, driver concentrating at the wheel. Lila learned to know them by the heavier rasp of their wide tires humming like bass notes on the asphalt. Her ride was so much more like flying, it wasn't like biking at all.

  She reached her particular bit of deserted cove after taking a hundred-mile detour and stopped at the side of the road. She was in a national park area, not far beyond a picnicking zone but far from the oversight of any building. The low barriers at the sides of the road told her about the traffic so that nobody would be cruising past to see a medium-sized woman in a frock pick up a third of a ton bike and carry it over sand and shingles into a dense patch of scrub trees. Hiding it was quite easy. She set its skin-theme to mimic the dry salt grass and the green branches with their tiny leaves and laid it on its side. A few branches were all that was needed to mask the wheels.

  The shoreline was quiet as she jogged the half mile to the base of the cliffs that rose out of the low hills with roller-coaster steepness. They were fractured and broken, huge pieces standing clear of the mainland. In one of these towers she'd found a cave. It was a hundred metres up from the highest tide line and it took her a few minutes to climb there, her fingers and feet constantly changing shape to find grips on the sheer rock. At last she pulled herself up and over the small lip of a window-sized opening on the seaward side and stepped down into her room.

  It hadn't started out so big, nor with furniture. That had taken a few weeks of digging, sneaking, stealing, and struggling to achieve. The project had saved her sanity. Now it was a sandy-coloured bolt hole with a view, a washing-up bowl for a sink and an enormous, luxurious, over-the-top mattress that had only narrowly survived being forcibly folded into three and stuffed through the opening. Low-energy lights glowed in sconces she'd scooped out with her fingers and gave the place a soft look as outside night drew on. She adjusted the sheet of metal she used to keep the weather out. The day was calm now, overcast, but there was always a breeze off the sea.

  A figure on the bed stirred as she made a noise pouring water into her bowl to wash. She undid the fastenings on the foul dress, feeling it loosen and undo itself rather than have her tangle with it. As it came free it lost its scruffy look and became a heavy fall of rich purple satin. The faery stitching that barely showed in Otopia glowed bright gold and tawny as the magical creature behind her got closer. She hung the fabric up on a padded hook and held her hand on it to feel the strange sensation of it warming and shifting of its own accord as it scented power. Now as soft as water itself it slithered over her hands and she fumbled it in her haste to get it put aside. The pen fell out of the waist sash and clattered on the rock floor. Two cool, powerful white hands touched her waist from behind, then slid up and cupped her naked breasts. She felt the hard body that went with them touch her back and buttocks and saw her shadow appear faintly on the wall in front of her where it hadn't been a second before.

  "You were gone a long time," Teazle said conversationally, his breath hot on the back of her neck. She felt his nose and lips brush her skin as he put his face close behind her ear and sniffed deeply several times.

  She made to turn around, but his grip was firm as he rejected the idea. He opened his jaws wide and she felt the sharp edges of his teeth against her skin as he bit the top of her shoulder gently. "Don't worry," he said. "Nobody came. I was quite safe." One of his hands traced down across her stomach and he slid his fingers under her panties and between her legs. She moved to make it easier and let her head fall back against his shoulder. He stroked her slowly. "You're so wet."

  Lila swooned for a moment, her favourite, the most indulgent, when she felt nothing but him and the intoxication of his pleasure as he touched her. She almost didn't care when he tore the panties off her in a sudden, single act of clawed violence. The slight pain in her skin only intensified her delight. Then his fingers were back, claws all gone. As he caressed her breast his other hand spread her open with soft, exploratory strokes.

  "You were well named," she accused him, longing.

  "You're so impatient," he said, deeply pleased. She turned to face him, but he made no move. His unnerving, white eyes stared down at her from his greater height, thick hanks of straight white hair hanging forwards over his forehead and shoulders. His body was hard, taut, very strong, and faintly luminous. She saw the spike tip of his tail twitch back and forth at the edges of her vision, somewhere near her knees. She started to buckle with desire and began to go down, lips already parting, but he stopped her with a stinging slap of his tail on her hip broadside. The air over his shoulders shimmered as if in a heat haze, though he wasn't hot, quite the reverse.

  "Did you go there again?" he asked. The music in his demon voice was deep, full of odd notes.

  She knew he meant her sister's memorial, the one that stood beside her own and their parents'. She went there every morning, just before she bought the awful coffee and made herself drink it in a toast to them; gut rot for Mom and Dad, and caffeine for Max who never left the house without mainlining Arabica. Teazle understood the last part, but his eyes gleamed now with a predatory fire. The first part made her weak, on his analysis, and he both disapproved of that and wouldn't hesitate to exploit it. She had been there again, tried to cry, tried to find something to say or think, failed again. One day she'd stop, but it wasn't today.

  "Bite me."

  He took her literally, and she felt the impact of his chest on her upper back, the hot breath and wide mouth against her neck, sharp teeth grazing her skin. Both of them fell forward with the force. The bowl of water went spewing to the side. Her few bits of faeryware scattered or broke.

  For a second his weight on her was dead with inertia. She exploded upwards, flinging her arms to the sides, bucking him off so that he went flying back into the mattress. On its peg the dress rustled and slithered with a hiss. Lila set her hands on her hips and glared down at the demon who lay, serious, calculating, mildly amused, and then eased his shoulders back and smiled at her.

  She stepped over him, one foot either side of his hips, then sat down on him without once breaking eye contact. His challenge melted into pleasure, and for an hour they sank into mindless physical entertainment. When it was done they lay side-by-side, arms touching.

  "About that search you were doing," she said presently.

  Teazle made an unhappy grunt. "Still nothing."

  She wasn't surprised. "You didn't tell me you were killing your way through half of Demonia."

  His head turned to her and his eyebrows quirked. "You asked me to look for objects of power or information concerning the Holy Three. Anyone who has things like that isn't going to let me know. Not least because I'll no doubt be wanting to steal them. How did you think I was going to look for them? And before you say teleport in and out of places secretly, let me point out that I don't know where those places might be until I off the capo and get their inventory in my hands."

  "But what ... are you taking over every family in turn and then searching every hoard?" She was almost speechless at the craziness of that plan. Until Mal had told her that morning she'd never have believed he would do such a thing. Then of course, after a
minute, she realised he'd never do anything else.

  "Every hoard, dungeon, keep, and bank vault," he said happily. "You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff and people and-"

  "And you didn't notice that the Council has issued a death warrant for you?"

  "Of course they have," he said with pride.

  She decided to drop that part. "And what about Madame Des Loupes?"

  "Her I would've asked. But she vanished before I could get there."

  "They say you killed her."

  "They say. Who say?"

  "The Council. And my ... the head of the Security Service here."

  "They're wrong."

  She used the palm of her hand as a paper and remade the image there for him. "Here. Looked like this."

  "I wouldn't make a mess like that. I'm not vengeful. I just want what I want."

  "I know it wasn't you."

  "But"-he turned his head and white hair fell across his face-"I am a bit concerned that someone will get me before I get anything useful. It may be no such thing exists in Demonia."

  "Just go check the coroner's necromancers first then."

  "Hmm." He closed his eyes, mulling over that. "And what else happened? You were out a long time."

  "I got a job."

  Teazle snorted with laughter. "And your part of the deal?"

  "Closer now," she said, referring to her mission to discover what devices the rogues had used against him months ago, and what she could do to arm him against them. "Much closer."

  "Grr, I hate it when you're winning," he said. "And I'm hungry. Let's go out and eat."

  Lila got up and recovered the bowl. There was enough water left for a very quick wash. When she put the dress on, it had miraculously cleaned itself and become a fashionable short-skirted item. She checked for the pen and slipped it into her pocket. In the meantime Teazle had dressed and was staring at her.

  "What?" she said.

  "That's a pen," he said.

  She waited.

  "Pens write."

  "I thought of that. Don't know what to put. Or where."

  He eyed the dress with suspicion and nodded. "Worth experimenting with."

  "I'll sign the restaurant check with it."

  Teazle's body had lost its gleam. His hair was dull. He looked like any thirty-something human man in casual clothing with unusually long white hair.

  She stepped out of the cave and floated to the ground in the twilight. They walked together to the road and, despite his complaints, called a cab.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ast midnight, in the hours when everything in the world is closer to the final darkness, Lila lay with her eyes open, her head on Teazle's cool shoulder. The cave was almost totally black to human sight, but she saw well by the slight starlight filtering in from its mouth. It was at this time she could hear the machines most clearly, though it was not when she was conscious, but in dreams that their meanings came through to her; and that was why she stayed awake as much as she could because inevitably, with the fall of sleep, came the invasion.

  As it was she listened to her lover's heartbeat and the sea, and tried not to hear underneath those things, underneath all things, the whisper of near-silent static that was no static: the endless om of everything the machines had ever said or thought or done in one eternally repeated present. They were not bound by time. Their signal was once, and for all. There was nothing of them it did not contain. They were the signal. She got that at last. They were not material beings in some other world sending messages. They were the signal. The original pieces that had been grafted to her were made material by the work and command of the signal, though it was not any more material than a radio wave. The pieces that had consumed her and of which she was now part were crude, brutish, in this three-dimensional universe, little outgrowths into space-time from a place outside, their only chance to communicate with her level of existence. She was a beacon, a receiver, an interpreter, a transmitter, a device for the signal.

  The signal itself was so complex, so vast, so unsuitable for any time-locked linear creature to hope to comprehend that even understanding this much about it had taken her all the years of her cyborg existence-which were two in strictly human terms, but, counting process iterations since her final conversion in the depths of Faery, now spanned some thousand or more ordinary lifetimes. Atop this frenzied torrent, her human experience was a patchwork so thin, so scattered, so trivial that it was negligible. In the total of the signal, in which she knew she must be continually hearing the story of her whole life, and death, she was a few kilobits of data, assimilable in a fraction of the time she could imagine as the smallest amount of time there could be.

  The nights were so long.

  She thanked god for the white demon, whose sleep was the sleep of the just, as deep and long as the ocean was wide. Without him she doubted she would have her sanity. Only his unquenchable arrogance, his absolute commitment to life and to the fulfilment of his part in it, had been an anchor strong enough to hold onto in the first days of her return home to find home long gone. Teazle wasn't moved by a fifty-year blip in his vision or the passing of much that he knew. His sense of self was too strong for anything to topple. She on the other hand ... most of what she'd thought of as herself was burned away or redundant. Her name seemed not to refer to anyone she knew. When it got bad, as it did around noon, after another visit to memory lane, she'd come and cling to Teazle and suck some of his energy up in a down-and-out junkie fix. Of course that's what it was. He didn't mind it because her neediness gave him power. She knew she ought to knock it on the head, but the close physical contact was too much like breathing to give it up. Whatever she liked to pretend about their sex together, it was a sanctuary, and damned if she didn't deserve one of those. Oddly, it didn't remind her of Zal-one of the few things that didn't.

  She heard the high tide creep up the sand and slough out again as dawn came.

  The light woke the demon. He stretched and then sniffed her, kissed her, and put his arms around her. The sensation of being at the end of the world receded and the static quieted itself.

  "I want you to find out what happened to Madame," she said, yawning horribly widely and for so long she got jaw ache.

  "On top of my search? You don't ask much." He sounded thoroughly pleased with himself.

  "I think it's going to be the closest thing to a lead we get. That, and I've got the keys to Sarasilien's office."

  There was a pause and she could almost hear the cogs turning as he thought about this. "Topple."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "It is a Topple. In Demon probability mathematics a Topple is a domino effect of important events occurring in rapid sequence because of an unknown yet critical value set reaching fruit."

  "The sad part is that I know what you mean," Lila sighed. "God I long for the old days when it would all have ..." She passed her hand in a whoosh over the top of her head from back to front. "You think there'll be more?"

  "It is certain. We are at the outset of a Conjunx. Better take spare panties today."

  She laughed and thumped his chest.

  "Harder," he said mildly, stretching again.

  "Don't get yourself killed," she said.

  "I am an avatar. My heart is pure. I cannot be defeated," he replied.

  She frowned and traced the powerfully square line of his jaw. "Avatar of what?"

  He shrugged and said nothing but smiled infuriatingly and then slowly got up and out of the bedding, dressed himself, put on his swords, and composed his hands together in front of his heart, genie style. "Until later."

  Lila managed to get her hands over her ears and her eyes shut for the vacuum decompression of his teleport departure. Bursts of short-lived nanoparticles bloomed and faded in his wake. She got up and went to take the dress off its hanger. It was a fashionable evening gown again, about as unsuitable for office daywear as she could imagine, short of what she'd worn yesterday, but not putting it on was unthinkable, so although she
'd seen herself returning to work in black combats and looking like she meant business, she was stuck with flimsy bias-cut indigo silk. In spite of her feelings towards it she was reticent to tear the dress, but she couldn't figure out how she could ride a bike in something that looked like it hung to her ankles and had a train. She put it on and it clung to her here and there, fine as tissue. Little faery letters glowed in its rich, royal colour.

  "Please," she said to it, feeling a tinge of despair. "Nobody will take me seriously in this. I need something more ... military."

  The dress didn't budge. She didn't have any mirrors, but she was ready to bet that the spaghetti straps and filmy look wasn't improved by a sport bra and sensible pants. She already hated herself for begging the smug faery concoction.

  "Right then, two can play at that game," she said, and without hesitation transformed herself into the full black-metal cyborg she was used to. Tough arms. Big, kick-ass boots. Breastplate. Greaves. To a nearly blind person in very bad light it might just look like she was strangely built and wearing evening gloves and platforms, but to a sighted person in daylight it looked strictly out-patient.

  She was getting used to that, and at least this way it was half on her terms. Zal had gotten her the armour, and when she got Zal back from his near-death existence in some nether dimension she was going to kill him.

  The pen rolled towards her and stopped at the edge of the card board box that was the nightstand, desk, table, and rubbish bin. She picked it up and slid it into one of the empty magazines in her forearm. At least there was no damn bag to carry.

  By the time she got the bike out of the spinney and onto the hardtop she was in a foul temper. The dress was slightly ripped and a seam had started to go, but as usual once it had set for the day there were no mendings or concessions. She hoicked the long skirts up around her hips and stuffed the train under her bottom to sit on the bike. She thought of tearing it. She thought of slicing it up. But she didn't dare. She had the feeling that the dress knew what she was thinking and was at once laughing and sinister. It had turned bullets. It was better than any armour she knew of. The bloody thing.