CHAPTER NINE
he gun went off perfectly. The bullet matched the armory handbook's guidelines and made its way across the room at a little over two thousand two hundred metres per second. Given that the average human nerve pulse travelled at twenty-seven metres per second, this wouldn't have left a normal Lila any time to blink let alone take a countermeasure in the event that the dress failed to protect her. As it was the neural propagation speed inside her Signal-revised body was 0.88c, and her reaction time within the abominable confines of her own material limit and the atmospheric conditions was 0.35c, which gave her a lengthily comfortable window in which to watch the dress throw a complete tantrum.
The magic that animated it operated at as close to c as Lila could calculate, changes taking place almost instantaneously as it made its decisions, with a total transformation of silk jacquard to carbon nanotube cordage propagating across the entire faery in a little over two millionths of a second. By contrast the dampener took so long to align itself in frequency that she was coated head to foot in ultralight diamond armour before it managed to disrupt the second process, in which the carbon tubes zipped full of a massive, yet perfectly contained electrical charge of a magnitude Lila couldn't grab because it was off the scale. As the dampener activated the potential of the charge dropped and then vanished. The dress paused for a breathless billionth of a second in disbelief and then ramped up another huge shot on a different amplitude.
Then began the long, slow, boring fistfight in which the charge powered up and the dampener cut in. Biff, bang, smash, paff, take that, and that....
A few thousand oscillations later, the bullet lazily twirling across the centre of the room like an idle silver hornet, the dress quit and brooded for a full thousandth of a second. Its gloom and anger were dark and terrible things, but there was also a kind of happy joy at finding something difficult and dangerous to fiddle with. If it had had a mouth it would have been cackling, and if it had had hands it would have been rubbing them together, there was no doubt in Lila's mind about that.
Tricky! said a little voice that was no voice in the air all around her. Tricky tricky tricky!
The dampener flummed on, spreading invisible wet blankets, and the voice went silent. Briefly the lights flickered, drenching them in an aeon of darkness; then the dampener paused and after an age of battle with recalcitrant ions light returned to shine on the silver slug as it reached the black fibre suiting, as smoothly glossy and twisted as a samurai's waxed braid over the centre of Lila's chest and on her fingertip braced against the ball of her thumb, poised to flick it away.
The dress made a cross noise like the sound of atomic fission, whipped up a charge, let the dampener pounce on it, and then matched the dampener emission, focusing it on the bullet. The dampener, stupid machine that it was, had been duped into producing exactly the wavelength necessary to vaporise the metal, a process that took so long that Lila was knocked backwards off the target block and into the air by the remaining kinetic burst that the dress chose simply to dissipate.
She landed on her feet, rubbing her chest where the impact and burning had made it sore and considered herself duly slapped for making an attempt on the dress's virtue. She felt a moment's gladness that the machines hadn't got the better of the magic.
Then there was a rustling, a snapping sound like sheets being wound in, and then a yank that almost pulled her off her feet as the nanotube armour became a Victorian ballgown of deep purple satin. Two more yanks confirmed the corset laces being winched to within a millimetre of snapping. All the breath shot out of Lila as the hard steel boning in the corset compressed her to half her usual size. Itchy lace gloves dotted with tiny blue pearls snarled up her arms to the shoulder and a choker of purple velvet slid around her neck, piercing the spiral of the faery key and embedding it half into her throat. Combs jabbed her head as her hair was dragged back off her face. And then, with a luxuriant sigh of silk and fillip of tulle, the dress relaxed over the enormous, galleon-sized cage of the skirt and let its hems drip fulsomely onto the floor. Red and gold dragons curled in the fabric, scarlet teeth matching the scarlet laces that were threatening to choke the life out of her, or would have if she hadn't had other means of acquiring oxygen.
"Touche already!" Lila gasped faintly. She smelled burning plastic and saw the dampener smouldering in its case. A bunch of emergency lights and warnings were skating across her vision like the stars of a knockout punch. Beneath all that her final readouts confirmed that the dress, flimsy piece of oversensitive fashion that it was, had summoned the disruptive power of a magnetar and contained it in a reticule of abeyance fields the size of a pomander for a trillionth of a second.
Also, at those speeds, the Signal sounded much more like music.
Back in human time Lila struggled to bend and unplug the charred dampener, feeling more cut in half than trimmed in. Bending between waist and shoulder was not possible. She disassembled the rifle and left it there for the armory staff to recover, along with the pulverized baton, before striding out and getting stuck in the doorway.
"Oh you have got to be kidding!" The cage was wedged. Before her, a smooth, endless hill of shining deep plum with handstitched dragons in lurid cartoon colours. After her, ditto. It filled the entire gangway and sent purple light glowing on the pale green walls in a way that was quite stomach churning. Lila tried to marshal the thing with her hands, grabbing and squeezing, pushing and pulling, but if she got one bit to budge another bit stuck fast. She was about three times wider than the corridor, so there was a lot of skirt pressed to the walls. Finally, by swaying side to side, pulling and shoving, she managed to reach the end of the hall only to find she was unable to reach the door handle. A slippery mound of angry satin pushed her back. At full stretch her fingers were just able to touch the smoothly rounded knob.
She contemplated slash and burn, but the experimental results were only too clear on the subject of who was going to win a straight fight. Other options, such as blowing out the door with short-range shells, all seemed too destructive. Coupled with smashing the bike into smithereens and wrecking half of the agency's antimagical units she thought it was best not to. The humiliating route was clearly her only choice, as the dress had no doubt planned.
Lila cleared her throat and opened a channel to the armory. "I seem to be having a bit of trouble...." Was that laughter in the background? Yes, it was. At least five individuals, three of them doing nothing to smother the effect. She glanced up to her left and saw the camera's lens glint with the reflected gleam of a dragon's tooth. "Opening the door please," she said quietly with a sigh. "In your own time."
A few moments later the knob turned and the door inched inwards to reveal Greer's heavily moustached face, a suspiciously pink face, peering around. "Reverse," he said, trying to swing the door to illustrate the problem.
Lila backed up a few steps and considered mustering the kind of dignity she'd seen on heroines in period romances when they had to confront similar situations, but her flaming face refused to do haughty, an expression she'd not had much cause to use before, and instead she felt herself snarling like the Wicked Witch of the West. She grabbed up as much skirting as she could manage in both hands and stamped forwards. At least the damned cage was so big it didn't impede her stride. She could practice dropkicking severed heads under there all night and nobody would know.
Greer held the door open awkwardly as she shoved and bustled her way past him. Forced within a few inches of his face she could detect smirking quite clearly.
"Why, I feel quite gallant," he said as she finally popped free into the larger corridor, staggering slightly. The armorer and his friends leaned over the security counter and stared at her with interest.
"Are you going to a costume party?" Greer said with almost perfect deadpan.
Lila straightened-it was hard not to-and tugged bits of skirt and flounce into position. "Do you know of any?" As ripostes went it was pretty pathetic. She ground her teeth.
"I'm sure something can be arranged." He put his hands behind his back and circled her slowly, taking stock. "Colourful."
"Well, this is simply riveting," she said, trying for composure and some smidgen of relevant dialogue. "But I have pressing matters to attend. Perhaps we could continue our delightful conversation in my office?"
"Yes, Miss Black," Greer said and extended his hand to indicate that she could precede him, before adding, not sotto voce, "Misters Gardner and Warrington you will lift your fingers off the local network broadcast keys this instant. Agency business is no laughing matter, I'm sure you will agree."
Lila stalked off without waiting to hear what rapier wit they were going to come up with. Not that being taken seriously really mattered. She ought to have been glad for some light relief, but the dress was so fiendishly tight and her ribs so painful that she was just grateful that she managed to reach Malachi's office without killing anyone on the way. Fortunately for her the door controls that let onto the courtyard were operable remotely, if you have the time and inclination to hack them via the building Al, which she did. As she swept through with only a brief moment of amoebic awkwardness she heard Greer call from behind her,
"Hey, you said your office."
She turned, impressed to see him involuntarily jump back half a foot as the weighted hem spun around like a morningstar and rapped his toes. "Yeah. And this isn't it."
"Am I to understand you're putting me off?"
She fished around for guile, but it was useless. "Yeah. Something like that. I'll be right along there."
"I bet you will," he said, and marched past her to the open door, where light was glowing out into the early evening dark. "Ho!" he said as he saw the state of the place, "Bentley, what are you doing in here? Spring cleaning?"
"I was waiting for Agent Black to ..." Bentley stopped at the sight of Lila, then without changing expression in the slightest, continued, "... return as instructed."
"Well here she is, the little lady, so let's not tarry a second longer!" Greer clapped his hands together and fixed Lila with a gleeful grin of absolute demand. "Spill the beans."
Lila took a deep breath and explained the day's events, beginning with the ghost ships and ending with the baton test.
"Why isn't he back, then?" Greer asked impatiently. "Faeries fiddle the clocks. Every one of them I ever employed squeezed the overtime until it squeaked without doing more than a two-hour day. Where did he go?"
"Possibly he apprehended Jones and followed her," Bentley said in her mild-coffee monotone.
Greer shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed through some of the broken and fallen items on the floor. He instantly reminded Lila of a kid scuffing through autumn leaves. "Nah," he said. "I don't think so. Mal doesn't like ghosts any more than Mrs. Greer likes checking her credit balance without giving me a call. He wouldn't go without leaving a note if he was doing that. Did he leave a note?"
"No," Lila said.
"Then he ain't gone after her. Black, you say your office has some -he took one hand out and waggled it expressively-"spatio- temporal problem. Think that could have been here?"
She suddenly saw where it was going and reluctantly decided that he was as smart as he was irritating. "Possibly ghosts were here too. Not just Jones."
"Show me the thing again." He gestured at Bentley, who held up the weird sextant for inspection.
"She left that?"
"I think so," Lila said.
"Let's take a wild stab and say the Fleet can't steer too well without it," Greer said. "Or maybe it already got its course. What's the setting?"
"The device appears to employ a number of complex spatial and temporal ... ," Bentley began.
"Just the payload, not the journey, "Greer broke in.
"It is a bearing, not a location, sir," the android said patiently. "If here and now, today and Bay City, is indeed the intended destination then the best I could to is plot a vector that pointed here."
Greer raised his eyebrows and shrugged and nodded in a "gimme" expression.
"The instrument was pointed here from Fundament, sir."
"Remind me."
"Under Under," Lila said. "Where Faery and Thanatopia and Alfheim and Demonia all fade into the Voidgulf. If you believe the topology. Aetheric science. Unverified."
"Mmnnn," Greer rocked back on his heels, considering. "Unveri- fled, my ass. We've come a long way in the last couple decades. And these Ghost Hunters of Malachi's were turning tricks out in the Voidgulf?"
"So he says."
"Why the bloody hell would she bring them here?"
"Collateral effect," Lila suggested. "Maybe she didn't intend that."
"Why leave this here?"
Lila looked at the strange instrument. It had stopped freezing and seemed to be room temperature now. Bits of the room had begun to steam in the radiant warmth of the heater. "Maybe she was just dumping it."
Greer turned to her, eyebrow raised, "Go on?"
"Well, if you come across some powerful, important thing and you realise it's a lot of trouble, too much trouble, maybe you'd do your best to drop it before it got you killed, or worse."
He looked at the dress and then back at her eyes. "Any other ideas?"
"Perhaps she wanted to implicate Agent Malachi in some business," Bentley said. "Or it could be a kind of payback, though it doesn't seem to bring as much trouble as the ghosts themselves."
"As I understand this Malachi had paid the Hunters to carry on working in the field," Greer said. "So that puts them on the same side. And Jones is a planewalker so she doesn't need a damned satnav."
"If Malachi needs or wants it, then why didn't he take it?" Lila asked.
"Good question," Greer nodded. He looked at both of them. "What were you planning to do with it?"
Lila shrugged. "Keep it for when he gets back. He must know the answers."
"I don't like the look of it," Greer said. "Bentley, take it to the lockup. Max security. Leave Mal one of those little plastic chip things so he can get it out of hock, but flag it so it'll call me when he does, right?"
Bentley nodded and got up from her post. When she'd gone Greer turned his eyes under their heavy brows to Lila. He looked at the dress and at her quite frankly. "You getting along all right?"
She recognised that the question encompassed her entire life. "Sure," she said.
He made a face that was frankly unbelieving but shrugged. "To your office then. I'm sure that's quite all right too, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir." She hesitated. "I was going to wait for Mal."
"Yeah well, I'm sure he'll find us if he has to," Greer said, ducking under the door flap. "Come on. I need to get home before ten tonight. Mrs. Greer has promised me not to call and I've got some TV dinners in the fridge that are only a week past the date."
Lila followed him back into the buildings. He held all the doors for her. Damned if she didn't find him strangely comforting, though she tried not to.
"I guess you'll be wanting another bike," Greer said as they walked. He sounded like an affluent, indulgent father.
Lila nodded.
"Bikes are only for good girls," he informed her. "And what are you planning to spend your allowance on?"
"Pocket handkerchiefs," she replied smoothly.
"You got somewhere to live?"
"My house," she almost didn't manage to choke that one out.
"Well, aristocracy always have a hard time keeping up with the old buildings," he said. "Roofs, windows, all need attention. Of course smart aristos can usually find some relatives to stay with."
"Yes, sir," she said. "Will this enquiry into my private life take a long time?"
"It's done. I just wanted to figure out when you might be available for dinner."
Lila was nonplussed. "Are you asking me on a date?"
"You dropped the sir."
"It got old."
"I was just asking about your plans."
"My husbands ... ," she objected, playing
the game.
"Yeah, tragic story about that. But you know. Said you were fine with it."
Lila thanked some god privately that they had reached her door. She really didn't know what to make of Greer when he was like this, and so far he was always like this. She didn't like to admit that the needling felt like caring in some shitty disguise, and knew it was because she wanted the friendship and was praying that it was a disguise. It wasn't like her to be so sure of her own motives. It spooked her.
She opened the door. Grey sea heaved. The glass ship was thoroughly wrecked now, spars of it planted in the beach and among the debris of the office like vast outgrowths of crystal. The white sheets of the covered articles floated on the sludgy ice water. It lapped at the sloping shore of natural woven hemp carpet and around the flotsam it had made of all Sarasilien's carefully preserved things.
Greer whistled between his teeth, impressed. "That's some interior designer you've got. A little apocalyptic for my tastes, if I'm honest. Who's the dead guy?"
"I've no ..." Lila started to say, moving slowly through the bitter air, but suddenly she had a terrible feeling she did know. For a moment she stared, seeing the awful scene and behind and through it the warm, relative comfort of the ordinary office, untouched by magic, all the laboratory behind it safe with the glass retorts shining in their cabinets and the crystal vials of unknown fluids glowing like past Christmas baubles. Her gloves thickened, furred as she walked forwards, fighting suddenly as the dress got caught in the swell and suddenly lifted on the weak tide, soaking and heavy as lead, the cold eating into her as if it were alive.
The figure roped to the mast was slumped forwards. Lank shreds of dirty blonde hair hung down from a scabbed and balding scalp, heavy with ice. They obscured the face, but the blue hands curled into fists were familiar as her own, even knuckled tight and solid with frost. Shards of broken crystal cut her hands and sliced the dress to ribbons as she struggled to reach a place where she could climb out of the hipdeep swell and onto the crazed frost of the ruined deck. Behind her she could hear Greer talking on the phone, his laconic voice easy, confident as he gave orders, but all her attention was on the figure doubled over itself a few metres away. It was wearing filthy rags that were whited to look clean with ice, snow, and salt. They were thickly bound on, but they couldn't entirely hide the length of the legs that were buckled at awful angles and frozen fast to the sheets of crystal with thick coats of ice like candle wax.
Chasing the Dragon Page 14