The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ Talia said. Elodie knew the jealous girlfriend act wouldn’t work with the younger sister. Talia had a better idea of what Elodie was like.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to pretend that I like you. In fact, if I was more aware of your existence I’d probably spend a moment or two feeling disgust for the way you explore the most extraordinary levels of weakness and victimhood, but who has the time?’

  ‘As always, lovely speaking to you,’ Talia said, and started to move past the feline.

  Elodie took hold of her arm.

  ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ Talia snapped, and tried to shake Elodie’s hand off. Vic moved to intervene.

  ‘I don’t like you but there are some things … Look, I have siblings as well, and what your sister has done ain’t right.’ Elodie didn’t like the way that Vic was looking at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Talia asked.

  ‘I’m home!’ Beth called as she entered the flat. The same peeling wallpaper, the same posters, worn furniture, empty wine and cider bottles and the smell of the last meal greeted her. She knew she had effectively trapped herself in the past. She always felt faintly ridiculous at the way she looked in the immersion. The way she used to look. The boots, combat trousers, band T-shirt and the painted leather jacket that she wore like armour. Beth had never realised what a pain having hair was until she’d shaved it all off.

  She walked into the lounge. Maude looked up at her, smiling. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by books, though the television was on and her laptop was open on a social media site.

  Uday was sitting on the sofa with a mug of tea, watching the television. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

  ‘Rough day at the funfair?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ Beth said. ‘You look hard at work.’ He stuck his tongue out at her.

  ‘Chavs still giving you trouble?’ Maude asked. Beth couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, don’t fuss, Maude, she’s a big girl. She can look after herself.’

  Maude pulled a face at Uday and then got up to make Beth a cup of tea anyway. Beth plumped down into one of the two sofas in the flat and just let banter and gossip wash over her.

  They weren’t Maude and Uday. They were simpler in so many different ways. Of course they had been corrupted. The Seeders had driven them insane and then the spores from the thing in the Solent had infected their flesh. When she had come to the Cathedral they had done their best to reassemble their personalities and then create an immersion environment for them to grow and live their lives in. Good lives, pleasant lives, lives she felt they had deserved, doubtless like billions of others had. At least, she told herself that was what she had done. Sometimes she wondered. She hoped and prayed this wasn’t for her benefit, her entertainment, a place of refuge for days like this.

  She had expanded the time parameters of the environment. Thousands of years had been mere months in the immersion. It contracted and expanded when she was going to visit so it complemented their narrative. The AI ran a parallel story for Beth and seamlessly integrated it with her neunonics when she put herself into the immersion but that was it, the rest she left to them and the AI.

  Maude handed her a tea. The immersion never got the taste right. At least she didn’t think it did, she was several clones and many soft-machine augments away from her original self. God knows what she had for taste buds now. Still, sometimes it felt like millennia since she’d last had a good cup of tea.

  The pocket of her leather jacket started to vibrate. Beth frowned.

  ‘It still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that you decided to join us in the twenty-first century and buy a phone. I know it must have frightened you and all, what with all the demons in the tiny box,’ Uday said.

  Beth gave him the finger and answered the phone.

  ‘I think we probably need you down here,’ Churchman said, although he sounded like Ted, who had run the Clarence Pier amusements in Southsea. He had been a large, fat, cheerful man and he had stood up for her when she had needed him to.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Beth said and hung up.

  ‘Some big dipper-related emergency?’ Uday enquired.

  ‘I thought we were going to watch Strictly!’ Maude said, pouting.

  ‘I’m going to tell all the other emo kids you watch Strictly,’ Uday threatened.

  ‘I told you, I’m a goth!’

  ‘I’m going to tell all the other retro-emo kids that you watch Strictly.’

  ‘Sorry, kids, I’ve got to go,’ Beth said, getting up and leaving the lounge to the sounds of protests and bickering. She closed the door of the flat behind her and dropped out of the immersion.

  The Monk’s place was at the apex of the roof. She had the smart matter make it look like it had a low-beamed wooden ceiling, stone walls and a polished, bare-boards floor; a kind of open plan, rustic attic. She was lying on her very large and comfortable bed.

  ‘What?’ she ’faced Churchman, but she already knew. The Cathedral had sent images from outside her attic to her neunonics. Talia was hammering on the door and shouting. The Monk closed her eyes and made a moaning noise. ‘How did she know where I was?’ But she knew that answer too..

  ‘Did you want me to lie?’ Churchman ’faced back.

  ‘Obviously,’ the Monk muttered, but she didn’t ’face it. With a thought she had the smart matter start to extrude a comfortable Chesterfield from the floor. She sighed again and opened the door with another thought. Talia stormed in.

  ‘You fucked Scab!’ she shouted at her sister. Her face was red with the kind of fury that only family can really cause. It was just like being back at home.

  ‘That fucking pussycat …’ the Monk muttered. ‘I hadn’t realised that you and he were an item, I thought that, y’know, it was casual …’

  ‘That I’m a slut?’ Talia was still shouting.

  Porn actress and occasional whore, actually, the Monk thought but decided to keep it to herself.

  ‘I thought you and Vic …’ she said instead.

  ‘He’s a friend.’ Talia thought for a minute. ‘And an insect!’

  Beth had seen it before, the ‘friends’ trailing her around, manipulated into doing what she wanted. Beth knew that she had been in the wrong, that fucking Scab was a bad idea for so many reasons. Even so, she found herself getting angry. She almost administered herself a slight sedative. Almost.

  ‘Oh, so Scab’s yours as well, is he? Someone else who’s off limits because you say so? Perhaps you should take to spaying them like your insane fucking cat friend!’

  ‘Elodie doesn’t … What do you mean someone else? We were never competing, anyone I had was always out of your league!’

  Beth actually rocked back on her heels. ‘You haven’t fucking changed, have you? Are you angry because I fucked the biggest arsehole in Known Space before you got to him? Why am I not fucking surprised? I’m astonished you didn’t offer to give Patron a blow job the moment you saw him!’

  Talia had her hand on her hip now. Her mask of fury had grown cold. ‘Well, at least I don’t have to have surgery to make myself pretty enough to steal men.’

  ‘I’ve been cloned … it’s optimised for the things I do.’

  ‘The violence, you mean? Really?’ Talia asked mock-innocently. Then she leaned in closer to her sister. ‘Then tell me. Why did you have yourself cut to look like me?’

  It felt like a slap, no, like a bucket of ice water thrown over her. She had to make a conscious effort not to look round for a mirror, though she would have had to create one from the smart matter.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Beth finally managed.

  ‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Scab obviously did.’ The Monk could see the vicious look of victory on her sister’s face. ‘And we were never actually related. You decided to look like me.’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘How long have you had to convince yourself of th
at?’

  Beth had forgotten just how much better at this Talia was. Even before she could control her temper, she had never hit her sister. Talia’s words were always too hurtful.

  ‘You want to know why I like Scab?’ Talia asked, her voice like brittle ice. ‘Maybe I’m just trying to find a boyfriend you can’t kill!’

  Beth went cold. She could not believe what she had just heard, even coming from her sister.

  ‘That’s what you do now, isn’t it? Kill. So nice you chose to experiment on my boyfriend!’

  ‘He was going to kill you,’ the Monk said quietly.

  ‘Maybe. You certainly got a taste for it, though, didn’t you?’

  So it was just going to be about inflicting pain now. ‘Why don’t you ask yourself how many died because of you?’

  ‘I didn’t ask—’

  ‘For any of this? To be born? I mean the people who died because of selfish decisions you took. You know I spoke to Maude and Uday about you.’ It was with some satisfaction that Beth noticed her sister at least had the decency to look guilty at the sound of Maude’s name. ‘Whore.’ Beth just breathed the word. She knew there was no coming back from this. She was too angry to care. Why? Did you have yourself sculpted to look like her? Even a little bit?

  Talia’s expression had grown cold again. ‘I’d rather be a whore than a mass murderer. You and Scab are made for each other,’ Talia said evenly. ‘How the hell can you judge me?’

  Talia turned and walked towards the door. Beth wanted to tell her to stop. To keep the door closed. To try and speak to her.

  The door opened and Talia walked out. The door closed. Beth stared at it.

  Talia managed to make it some of the way down the corridor before she stumbled and had to lean against the wall. Then the tears came. It felt like she would never be able to stop them.

  The terrifying multi-directional elevator/transit monorail journey to her room had been almost enough to shake Talia out of her misery and anger. Almost.

  The Cathedral’s unobtrusive AI had let her know that she could configure the room however she wanted. For now it was enough that she had a bed and an assembler with a half-decent recipe for vodka and marijuana.

  ‘Ms Negrinotti is here to see you,’ the polite AI announced over Joy Division. Part of the wall became a screen. The feline was standing by the door.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Talia muttered, sniffing and trying to wipe tears and snot off her face with the back of her hand. ‘Can you tell her to go and fuck herself please?’

  ‘I shall certainly convey that you do not wish to receive visitors at the moment,’ the AI said. The screen disappeared. ‘I do apologise. The security to your door is being overridden, would you like me to alert the militia?’

  The door to her room slid open and Talia sighed. Elodie strode in. Talia considered lobbing the half-drunk bottle of vodka at the feline but decided it would be a waste of good vodka.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Talia told her. She couldn’t even muster much in the way of venom.

  Elodie held her hands up. ‘Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot—’

  ‘Wrong foot? Wrong foot!’ The feline had to duck as Talia flung the vodka bottle at her. It bounced off the wall and fell to the thick carpet, only to be absorbed nearly immediately. ‘You have been a total … cunt to me since the moment we met!’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Look, I’m sorry. Scab and I go way back. It wasn’t easy. I mean you’re really pretty, I mean not now …’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘But normally; I have to stake my claim. And it’s not just me – none of us are nice when we do that, humans, lizards, ’sect queen, but felines are the best at it.’

  Talia could see this. It wasn’t the first time that someone had tried to make her life difficult because they were jealous of her.

  ‘Okay. So?’

  ‘So we’re territorial, but you’re crew. We fight but I’ll protect you against outsiders.’

  ‘Who? Beth?’ Talia sighed. ‘She’s not an outsider, she’s my sister,’ she said miserably. ‘And possibly an alien.’

  ‘He doesn’t love her, you know.’

  Talia was surprised that Elodie would even suggest such a thing. ‘Well no, obviously, he’s incapable. It was just a sleazy f—’

  Elodie sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘He’s in love with the ghost of the ship.’

  Talia frowned. ‘What are you—’

  ‘I had a brother who did something similar to me,’ Elodie said. ‘It really hurts, doesn’t it?’

  Talia nodded.

  7

  Ancient Britain

  The valley in the shadow of the Mother Hill was white with snow now. They had seen little of the Lochlannach. They either stayed in the fort, or were occasionally seen scuttling around the mouth of the cave that led to Annwn and subsequently to Oeth on the island in the cavern lake.

  Tangwen was bored. She did not think that she liked going to war. Among her people warfare was raiding, and then, when they were tracked back into the marshes, ambushes. Since she had agreed to help Britha, Teardrop and Fachtna, they had seemed to do little but run and fight. Although there had been a lot of talking and arguing as well. All this waiting, however, made her want to leave and do something else. It gave her too much time to think about the things she had done. Sleep came easily but it was not restful. She saw the faces of those she had killed. Not in battle, but to prove points, to enforce discipline. The killings had saved lives in the long run, so she told herself, but she wondered if it had just been easier to kill those who got in her way. Even if she had left she knew her dreams would have gone with her. Besides, she had responsibilities again. Though nothing as well defined as seeing the survivors of the wicker man to safety.

  As soon as they had arrived in the valley, Bladud had sent well-protected foraging parties ranging far and wide across the surrounding countryside. It seemed that the Lochlannach had been content to leave alone the food supplies of the villages they had attacked. Bladud’s foraging parties had harvested what they could, though much of it had already spoiled on the stalk. They took what stores they could find, though much of that had been allowed to run down before the impending harvest. Where they had done well was with livestock. There had been a goodly amount of cows, some pigs and aurochs, and many, many sheep. Rarely had a warband had so much mutton to eat.

  She was sitting on a fallen tree next to a trail of churned up, now frozen, mud and animal shit that led east from the camp, out of the valley, when the newcomers arrived. The snow was coming down heavily again. It was already halfway up her calves. There was little visibility and their emergence from the flurries might have surprised someone who had not drunk of Britha’s blood, but Tangwen had heard the sound of creaking wood and iron-shod horses on the frozen earth, and smelled leather, frozen sweat and beasts long before she saw them.

  The warriors rode small but sturdy looking ponies, and had either small round shields or large oblong ones hanging from their horses. They all had longswords at their sides and casting spears in leather sheaths hanging from their saddles. They carried their longspears – which meant they were ready to fight – but the tips of the spears were pointing down, which meant they were prepared to talk first.

  They were small, dark-haired men and women wrapped in cloaks and furs. They wore plaid trews and the men had neatly trimmed beards and moustaches. Few of them wore armour of leather or metal. She wondered if the blue woad tattoos she saw creeping above necklines and onto faces would keep them safe. Many tribes painted themselves for war, ritual, and to hide themselves, but to permanently mark the skin in this way meant one thing: the warriors from the far north had travelled to join them.

  Behind the horses came the chariots for the warriors of higher rank. Tangwen remained unconvinced of the practicality of chariot warfare. She knew they were useful in the right circumstances but you had to be very lucky, or going up against a particularly stupid opponent, to get those circumstances. And
they were of no use in the marshes she had grown up in.

  The first chariot was reined to a halt in front of her. The charioteer was at odds with the rest of the northerners. She was tall, blonde, blue-eyed. Tangwen thought her face would have once been attractive were it not for the puckered scar tissue and the angry expression.

  Standing on the back of the chariot was a small man, only a little taller than Tangwen, with a surprisingly slight build. He wore a fine cloak and had a thick gold torc around his neck, which must have been cold against his skin in this weather. She wondered if they had changed just up the track to make an impression, though they were mud-spattered and frost-covered, which told of a long journey this day. His shield was well-made but showed signs of extensive use. Chunks were missing from his scalp and his face; his mouth had been cloven at some point in the past and left a mess of broken teeth, but his beard was neatly trimmed and oiled. He had clearly taken a lot of time with the beard. Tangwen recognised a rhi when she saw one.

  The rhi spoke but it came out as a mush of words. Despite the gifts given to her by the chalice, she could not understand what he was saying. She sensed rather than saw movement to her right. She glanced over to see a stooped figure in a brown robe with a tasselled hood covering their features walk out of the flurries, leaning heavily on a staff as gnarled as their form looked. The bent figure was clearly a dryw.

  The rhi was speaking again, slower but still in the language of the Pecht. ‘Little girl, do you know Britha, ban draoi of the weakling Cirig people?’ was what Tangwen was pretty sure the man said. His look spoke of his utter contempt for her. Tangwen raised an eyebrow at being called ‘little girl’ and looked down to check she was still carrying weapons, wearing armour, and generally comporting herself as a warrior. She was.

  I guess my fame as a mighty warrior has not spread as far north as I had hoped, she thought, a small smile curling her lips. She knew she should take offence, challenge the rhi, fight his champion, but she was trying to avoid killing members of her own warband as much as possible.