“I give up,” he said, forgiving me without trying, so that I felt even more of a shit. “What?”
So, he didn’t know. Well . . . “She’s in the door. Don’t slam it.”
I put my head back on the rest as Ktikt neglected to do her job during the quiet sounding of her name.
I wished he hadn’t gone.
31 / Valkyrie
Valkyrie landed on the hardtop of the basketball courts at the Hoolerton end of the Park. Nobody was out in such vile weather, not here anyway. She took the footpaths through the dark, dripping trees at the end of the playground and past the creaking sign of the Pig and Piper. The windows were brightly lit and music and voices drowned out the weather as she passed the door.
From behind the high wall of the Hinterland came a crashing of metal and rubble and a keening sound, inorganic and furious. Valkyrie shook water from her wings in an unnecessary flip of all the flights and walked more quickly until she passed beneath the bridge at the end of Crisscross Street.
The cold quickly chilled her armoured skin and snow began to gather and solidify on her wherever it got purchase. She felt the soles of her feet shift their pattern to grip the treacherous ground and walked on against the wind to where she knew the great walls of Anadyr Park would become the railings that surrounded the Winter Palace.
Uluru for Unevolved, that’s what this place is, she thought, although it was a damn sight less pleasant for the most part. This was like the old versions of Uluru, where to enter into a state of sleep while in that virtual world was to become the victim of every whim or nightmare that you might dream. She took out the gris-gris from her ammo-clip holder and put it on.
Bob was not at his usual haunt inside the railings where thick, overgrown shrubs formed cover and allowed good views of the front of the building. There was no heat trace at all there. Valkyrie could not pass through the gate’s bent bars. She opened her wings and half leaped, half flew over, kicking off from the top of one immense spike to drift down into the gardens. Bob was not near the front either, not down by the old servants’ entrance and not inside the relative luxury of the coal hole.
She found him at last huddled in a curve of the thickest part of the box hedge maze and folded herself into a compact shape near him so that she was fully hidden.
“We must stop meeting like this,” Bob murmured. He was almost invisible even from four metres away, wrapped in a thick coat that was both heated and camouflaged.
Valkyrie cleared ice from her visor and looked more closely at one of the upper balconies, where she could see that the doors were completely smashed in. “I came to relieve you.”
“Ah.”
She could tell from the humour in the sound that he knew perfectly well she had come as soon as she heard about Saxton’s infection.
“What’s that about?”
“I don’t know. I never bugged that room, well, I did, but they never worked. Very peculiar.”
“Something broke in.”
“Yes. A big, grey Forged son-of-a-something that came out of the forest. It was howling all night. Must have started running more than thirty kilometres out by my calculation. A woman screamed and it ran up the wall and in. I haven’t heard a thing since.” He was enjoying knowing so much.
Valkyrie was incensed that there could be any kind of action and she missed it. She thought hard. “Sure it wasn’t a Stuffie?”
“Couldn’t tell actually,” Bob said. “It was a bit quick. I tried looking it up in the Genesis but nothing matches.”
“Stuff then.” But she knew what, or who, it was.
“Maybe.”
Valkyrie frowned, remembering her previous visits here. Bob would never commit to any knowledge unless it was proven forensically. He did not respond. Her vexation was cut short as she heard a new sound, not the wind or the trees, but the creak of snow underfoot. Bob heard it too—he uncoiled from his seated nook and she saw his gloves, boots and tail emerge from the cocoon of the coat.
Then she saw the yellow forms of warm, living objects move clear of the trees to their right and come forward, green and blue limbed. They were big and they were many. They flowed through the tall, upright trunks of the forest and over the open garden like oil.
“The house!” Bob shouted and she was right with him. They leaped up, over the stocky bulk of hedge before them and across the open ground towards the back door of the Palace. Behind them came the wolves.
The largest of all, who raced to within ten metres of them, jumped as Bob ran up the stone steps between the lower garden and the formal lawns. Its huge paws caught the belt of his coat and brought him crashing down in the thick snow. Valkyrie turned back the few strides she had gained and seized the beast by the ruff around its neck. She lifted it into the air, its teeth clashing on her metal arms, and flung it away, but not very far. It was heavier than she had expected.
As it got up she saw it was not an ordinary wolf. Its forelimbs were a little like human arms and its hind limbs were long at the thigh. It had human eyes. Its jaws were all wolf however. It stood, growling, as the rest of the pack caught up.
Valkyrie reached down and pulled Bob’s near-featherlight form to his feet. He spun around, gun in hand.
“Are those werewolves?” she hissed at him on shortwave radio.
“Something more like me I think,” he said. “Though rather less well brought up, I fear.”
The lead wolf wiped her muzzle in the snow, looking at the gun. Then she sat down and expansively licked her chops. The rest of the pack circled close to her again, then they all made a howling sound, short bursts and yips.
Valkyrie saw a moving light behind her, coming from the Palace. It bounded through the drifts towards them, neither beast nor human. She left the wolfpeople to Bob and turned to face it, sure that it was the creature who had left her the gris-gris.
Bob glanced around once, fast. “That’s it,” he said, “the Salmagundi.”
The unregistered Forged slowed and stopped outside Valkyrie’s immediate range though not the range of her hidden weapons. Its voice was hoarse and it took time to decipher that it had said, “Who are you? You don’t belong here.”
“Same question.” Valkyrie stood her ground and looked it over for weapons. The fact that it had seemed well-intentioned before gave her more confidence than she felt with the wolves or the Stuff creatures she’d met.
The lead wolf made a guttural bark. “Glu. Lilan.”
“Holy man,” Bob repeated after a second. “It said ‘holy man.’ ”
“That’s right.” With its brilliant yellow eyes narrowed against the sleet the creature peered more closely at Bob. It had begun speaking to them via radio. Rough hair blew around its wiry body; feathers flared in the wind; fur ran with water. “You and I. Not so far apart.” It glanced at Valkyrie with a tilt of its heavy head. “Government. Amulet.” It nodded and she thought it grinned. With a long whistle it called to the wolves and they got to their feet and came rushing up around it, fawning and licking at its legs with puppyish delight.
The sky rippled with colour. White and green lightning lit the distant mountains. Valkyrie saw the rocks and ice changing shape. She thought she could hear voices high in the air, near the cloud line, but could see nothing on any wavelength. She looked for the shadow claws.
The Forged heard it too. He gave her a long glance and said, “Inside better. Palace changes much less catastrophic under Engine Time inside.”
Valkyrie looked down at Bob. He twitched his long arched whiskers in a shrug and drew his coat closer about him. They followed the Forged as it turned back to the Palace. The wolves tumbled around it for a short distance, then, at some undetected command, raced away in the direction of the woodland beyond the rose garden.
Their holy man led them down steps by the kitchen gardens entrance, where the way was worn to muddy sludge by the passage of feet going in and out from the building. It was a common entrance for the Foundation, who used the gardens at various times of the week. There wa
s nobody here now however, and Valkyrie had to bend double to get her wings and body through the narrow access passage. Fortunately it soon opened to the kitchens.
These rooms were wretchedly low in the ceiling so she had to stand with wings half-unfurled and trailing behind her. The sinewy Forged turned around, between them and the door to the rest of the Palace, and sat down on its haunches. Bob walked smoothly past Valkyrie and sat down in one of the old wooden straight-backed chairs set at the long oak table that ran through the centre of the room. The fireplace was cold and cobwebbed. Empty gas cylinders rolled about under the table. Valkyrie curled her lip at the slovenliness of it all. The only neat thing was the scrubbed table itself and the long row of defrosting lamb legs that sat on top of it upon a plastic picnic tablecloth, oozing watery blood.
Bob pushed his hood back and scratched the pale golden fur covering his head and face. His long white whiskers had been swept back across his cheeks but now they rose in serried arches and stretched out into the air. He fixed the gryphon creature with a straight gaze and put his gun away. “What’s your business here?”
“I do the god’s work,” said the other. “And yours?”
“I do the Ministry’s work,” Bob said cheerfully, “and my partner here fights with me because she does the other Ministry’s work. We’re like a team of people who aren’t on the same team, but on the same side. I’m the nice one and she’s the muscle with the short temper. Never seen you here before.”
“I was never here before.”
“Nice wolves.”
“People,” said the holy man calmly. “The Engine changes deep in Anadyr have driven them towards the city. They’re hungry.” He glanced at the meat on the table.
Bob nodded. “I particularly liked the way you shinned up the Palace wall and broke into that apartment. Did you have anything particular in mind or was it en route to the freezer section?”
The creature stood up and turned towards the door that led up into the Palace.
“We’re not done,” Bob said.
Valkyrie stepped forward. “Who are you?” She made to grab hold and got a handful of feathers and one of fur. The gris-gris bumped on her chest.
—What is that? Bob beamed at her.
—Nothing for you to worry about, she told him via radio.
Her prisoner growled and his flanks shook but he made no retaliation. “Let me go, Agent Skuld, if you will. I have given you a gift of trust and you ought to extend the same to me. I cannot and will not help you here, no matter what you have to say, or to do. This night is not yours to claim.”
His fur slid through her fingers. The grey shape darted forward and vanished along the unlit passageways towards the eastern dining rooms and the stairs. Valkyrie turned and saw Bob’s astonishment as answer enough.
After a moment or two he said, “Technically, I think you should have hung on longer.”
“But . . .” Valkyrie said. “We had nothing on him anyway. He was just—weird.”
“I think we could have made the Palace a public property and got him for breaking and entry,” Bob said, without serious intent. “Anyway . . .” He stood up and fished around in his pockets uncertainly.
Valkyrie popped the controls on her helm and took it off. In a strange way it was a relief to breathe the smelly, damp air and have her human senses returned. She felt much better. “I was going to interview Saxton, and I still am . . . I . . .”
“Wait, wait.” Bob tipped his head to the side and sat down again. “Not every piece of technology died. I can hear Saxton’s apartment. Somebody’s in there with him.”
Valkyrie paused as Bob gave her a direct transmission link to his auditory system. One of his bugs was feeding fuzzy and difficult blurts of conversation to him. She heard Saxton’s familiar voice, very tired, and another voice, a man, consoling him. But then the conversation turned to accusation, and by the things said she realized that the person she didn’t know could only be the splinter itself.
When it was over she found herself staring at Bob. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think so, though it would be unprofessional to confirm it,” he said, taking a tissue out of his pocket and carefully wiping his whiskers with it. He stood up. “Time I was going. I’ll see you never, I trust, since our orders possibly diverge at this moment.”
“Yes.” She hesitated awkwardly. “Thanks, Bob.” It was hard to talk. Her mind seemed suddenly empty; too many new and unexpected probabilities had sucked it temporarily dry. She recalled Belshazzar’s command to try to keep Bob from doing anything rash, but had no real idea of how.
“Mmn, back to town.” Bob hesitated and then selected a leg of lamb from the table. “Think I’ll take a peace offering with me, just to be on the safe side. And if not . . .” He drew his gun and curled his finger against the trigger. “Adios.”
“Sayonara.” Valkyrie went the other way, along the service passage and into the dining room above. She asked Belshazzar’s sister to trace his progress for her, and they acceded from their spaces in SankhaGuide.
She passed through the serving doors and stood up straight at last. The doors flapped shut at her back and the dull sound boomed in the vast, empty space where she stood. A moment later a starry tinkling made her look up. Crystal chandeliers hung beyond the reach of her outstretched wing-tips, twelve all in a row, their dripping tiers plunging down like freeze-frame photographs of sea-spray. She could see them only because of the movement. Without light they had no sparkle, only edges that jittered against the faster, thinner air.
The room itself was extremely dark. She could just make out the ends, one a vast fireplace big enough to hold a grate the size of a horse cart. Air moved that way in a ferocious draw, shooting to the high chimney-stacks above. Cold air seeped in through the windows and the doors where they didn’t quite fit. There was an entrance from the hall directly across from the kitchen entrance. Valkyrie went through it, carefully. The place reminded her of a museum, or a cathedral.
She walked softly, cushioned by the heavy carpets. The hall had light; small yellow glimmers from household night-lights plugged into the electrical outlets that lined the walls in the skirting, cleverly hidden where they were not used by mouldings, each in the shape of a different insect. The gleaming revealed more glassware near the ceiling and paintings hung on every space against crimson oriental papers. Everywhere she looked she saw luxury, old and forgotten, but not worn. It was simply ignored.
She discovered many great halls, ballrooms, lounges, sun rooms; rooms decorated in every style and full of untouched furniture as though just left yesterday; a room full of gilded carriages on the first floor and another containing a motley of stuffed wild animals and old Egyptian mummy cases and other artefacts she knew nothing about. The great library was on the ground floor, and she came to it via a strange stair she had thought would take her up, but found it only went up to go down again and became a narrow, twisting wooden spiral stair that was barely big enough for her feet.
This brought her down beside a two-storey-high set of oak shelves, carved with ivy and olive garlands. The shelves were full of leather-bound volumes, each detailed on the spine with individual gilding and colour. She turned around and around inside a well of dictionaries and atlases; worlds and languages she knew nothing of but couldn’t help thinking—isn’t this all in the Guides? Why have so many things that are never taken down or read?
At the bottom she found her stair to be unique. The shelves lined the walls of a room the size of a football pitch and projected out in curlicues of a Mandelbrot design far into the parquet flooring—a real antique. There were reading areas dotted everywhere, some comfortable tiny nooks with soft chairs, and others simple tables with heavy glass-shaded lamps. She was walking and looking and thinking she should take the main staircase and face Mandy if he was there, when she rounded one of the fractal corners and found a pool of light spilling from a single lamp, beneath it a large, open book and holding the book the
oddly slight figure of Saxton’s friend and Francine’s boyfriend. Her splinter cell.
He didn’t look surprised to see her.
“ ‘Beauty is truth, and truth beauty,’ ” he read aloud and closed the book. Then he looked up at her.
His face was a ghastly colour, pale and greyish, with reddened eyes and a mouth whose bruised colour was spreading out beyond the lips. His hair was heavy, tangled and hung thick and dark to his shoulders, where it vanished against the black of his clothes. His wrists and ankles, hands and feet looked vulnerable—what he wore didn’t fit—but on closer inspection she found them strong. The eyes that gazed up at her were set to guard emotions that were barely under control.
His face was strange. She could only see clearly the feature she was looking directly at. Eyes or nose, mouth or jaw . . . without her focus they became curiously undefined so that she wanted to look again, again. She had to look down at the book to make herself stop looking. She felt disturbed, as though she had been about to discover something profound and now it had gone with the flick of her attention.
She had to look back. He had become alarmingly attractive.
He smiled as though she were a distant happy memory he had regained. “What do you think?” he asked her, placing the book on the table where the lamp stood, its surface as high as his chest and tilted so the standing reader of average height could be comfortable. “Not very fair I suppose. Here you are mapping the territory for Solargov and I start asking you questions from Literature 101. Personally I think it’s shite as an observation. On the other hand, I can’t help liking it as an idea. Really torn.”
When she still didn’t speak he said, “I suppose you have the Guide and everything on tap.” Here he clicked his fingers next to his ear. “Ah, never mind. I’ve got the feeling books aren’t going to cover it.”
She recognized the brittle kind of sarcasm. She had thought it was her only mode of communication lately: a defensive get-me-before-you-do verbal brick wall.
“Well,” he said, his attention turning inwards so that she felt its absence like a shadow on her skin. As it withdrew so did all her will to remain there, like magic. He reached over and turned the light off—“Good night”—and walked away, head down, and bled into the general darkness of the room.
Living Next Door to the God of Love Page 25