Keeping It Real

by Justina Robson

  “He’s been out twelve hours. Nothing wakes him up.”

  “If she doesn’t let go soon he could lose one of his feet. The circulation’s going, and what’s wrong with his hand?”

  “Some kind of magical thing. You hit with a magic bullet, eh Lila?”

  “What’s his real name, d’you know? That might work.”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Call his agent.”

  “No need. Who do you think that schmuck in the purple fur coat is? Malachi brought him in and told him this is a private hospital. He bought it, if you can believe that. Guy with him is the producer. Apparently they’re surgically attached or something.”

  “Get him in here. He might know something worth knowing.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Lila listened and smiled inside. She had Zal and everything was concluded to her satisfaction. Then Buddy Ritz came in, and Jelly Sakamoto with him, who started shouting in a high voice.

  “What the hell you doing to my motherfuckin’ star, freak girl? Put him down! What you think you’re paid for . ..” It went on a great deal, like a fit in a word factory, expletives building up like explosives. But Jelly didn’t get too close.

  Now that Lila looked at him from her beautiful distance she could see herself reflected on his eyeballs, and she could see his point. Her fully activated battle armour made her a steel colossus with a woman growing out of its torso. Blood had run out of her eyes, mouth, ears and nose, and from the places where she joined the metal. She was naked and coated in mud. Her arms and face were locked solid. Her face bore an expression of the kind of euphoria you sometimes saw in religious icons. Zal lay across her arms, his head hanging loose, his hair a flag of defeat. Various people, who looked small and puny beside her, were struggling with cables, keyboards and remote controls, prying fruitlessly at her arms and legs, and warily watching her weapons-ports. There was a long, black elfin arrow shaft sticking out of her left shoulder.

  Lila wanted to tell them not to be silly, but she couldn’t move. She felt weary, and that she would like to lie down.

  Jelly went off and sometime later returned with Sorcha, all covered up in a black cloud of coat and dark glasses, her high heels sounding like the crack of doom on the hard floor of the emergency room.

  “Flown back from goddamned Vegas!” Jelly was screeching. “Vegas and are you listening to me, C3PO? He is on stage in six hours. Can’t you people pull your fingers or your power out of her ass? We’re talking millions of serious dollars.”

  Sorcha walked up slowly, her face set and serious. Lila wanted to smile.

  “You look bad, girl,” Sorcha said quietly.

  No, I’m fine, Lila tried to say, although nothing came out. Everything is fine.

  Sorcha put her hand up, up, up to where Zal’s head hung and touched the tip of one, long, pointy ear. Already on tiptoe with the heels, she leant forwards, closer, closer, so that Lila could feel how warm she was, and smell her perfume. She whispered something that even Lila couldn’t hear.

  Zal twitched and jerked suddenly, so strongly that he nearly fell from Lila’s hold. He made a noise of pain and struggled to claw his way upright, but Lila’s arms automatically closed more tightly, to prevent him falling. She would rather have let him go, because she was j exhausted now and she had started to hurt, but the more he fought to get free the more her arms and hands drew him closer, tighter, safer.

  “Stop, for hellsakes!” Sorcha hissed at him, her tongue a strip of red flame. “She’ll crush the life out of you. Something’s gone wrong with her. She’s broken. Stay still.”

  Zal stopped. Lila felt him take hold around her neck in an effort to move to a less agonising position. She was glad he was ready to take his own weight. Even something as light as an elf got heavy after a while, and now she could barely stay awake. Only the growing news of discomfort and worse pains coming through to her from the great distant plain of her body kept her from falling asleep. She longed to be able to yawn.

  “Shut her down! Reboot! Power cycle her! Reverse the friggin’ polarity!” Jelly shouted encouragingly.

  “Fuck the shut up, man,” Sorcha snarled at him and he jumped aside from the dart of blue energy that came zipping out of her mouth with the words. Sorcha turned back calmly, “Zal, are you cool?”

  Lila couldn’t see what Zal did but Sorcha chuckled and said, “Sure, you cool. Now don’t go anywhere. I got to take me a picture of your ass for the guys.”

  Then someone took the world and put it back in Lila’s head. Her arms collapsed and Zal fell hard against her, dragging her head down and forward. She lost her balance and staggered and screamed with agony. She felt Zal let go, and the natural recoil as she was freed broke something important in her back.

  When Lila woke she saw the familiar ceiling of the Incon hospital—a bank of foam tiles set in a light metal frame with recessed lights that shone on her but avoided her face, like eyes that couldn’t bring themselves to quite look at her. She smelted antibac and other chemical compounds in the air. Although she felt fine she soon realised this was because she could feel no physical sensations from the neck down. A sadness and sense of defeat crept through her, so profound that she felt she would never be warm again. Tears ran, betraying her with their heat and the softness of their touch, but she couldn’t wipe them away.

  She was plugged into the Central Intelligence Tree, the AI which operated all of Incon’s communications and data traffic and provided informational support. It responded to the flush of blood in her face by opening the windows. Lila couldn’t speak, but her Al-self asked it in machine code:

  Where is Zal?

  Zal is not within the CI Tree span, it told her, obliged to notify her of Zal’s uplink status as a matter of protocol. He was discharged two hours ago and taken from here to the Coke Arena at Bay City Center by Buddy Ritz, Jelly Sakamoto and Jolene Duchovnik.

  What time is it? Lila asked.

  It is ten p.m. Pacific, the machine said.

  Patch me to the Coke Arena coverage of the concert, she insisted.

  The AI switched her out of its disconnected security to the Incon servers that were connected to the Otopia Tree and gave her TV.

  Zal’s support act was still on. Lila let her mind wander through the system and found the internal CCTV units. She started to search through the crowd, and at the same time to look for Zal in the dressing areas. She saw Poppy and the other faeries with headphones on, warming up by singing old RftB melodies. She saw Luke and DJ Boom drinking lite beer, their feet up on the table in the green room, watching the support band and flicking broken potato chips at each other.

  Then there was Zal, sitting a slight distance apart on the edge of a table, drinking something out of a styrofoam cup, both his hands in gloves, although that went with the general High Elf woodlands look the designers had given him. His slanted eyes were glittery with a bigger than natural kind of high, she thought, but it could have been the lighting. He looked as though he had been transported in from Alfheim, like he carried it with him in a forcefield that could repel all Otopian influence. The white cup seemed bizarre by contrast. He glanced at the camera, into Lila’s eyes, then looked down at the cup in his hands and casually crushed it flat.

  Lila made herself switch gear and start working for real.

  All the rig reports were in order from the road crews, all the security features functional. The guards collected mundane and magical weapons at the gates.

  How badly damaged am I? she asked the Incon Tree, knowing it would never lie to her or try to make her feel better. When will my insystem be on again?

  You are expected to recover sufficiently for insystem to be returned by five a.m. Pacific, it told her in its neutral, sexless, diffident voice.

  What happened to me?

  You were in wet-surgery for an hour and a half. Surgical nanoware packs are’still operative at the sacroiliac site, at the arrow puncture, and at the major junction bodies within your leg pro
sthetics. Your reactor core remains undamaged. You are receiving a rebuilding nutrient structure through blood transfusion. The magical detection device has recorded a significant alteration in your energy pattern which is consistent with exposure to high-count Zoomenon radiation. The effects are so far unmanifested, and unknown at this time. This has been added to your permanent record. You have been cleared to continue operations, but you will not be permitted to operate without support in the field.

  What’s the delay then? Lila wondered at the five a.m. deadline. It seemed a long way off. She pushed aside her resentment at being downgraded. That meant the Incon special agents team were watching her, because they didn’t know what the Zoomenon exposure might do, or how it could change her. She didn’t know either. She didn’t want to.

  Your brainwave readouts are erratic, and follow a non-typical pattern. Engram restoration therapy has been recommended before insystem renewal by Doctor…

  Yeah, well, screw that. Lila said. Switch it on.

  I am obliged to inform…

  “One hardly needs to be telepathic to know what you’re thinking,” Sarasilien’s voice said quietly beside her.

  Lila would have jumped if she could have. She hadn’t known he was there, but he must have been sitting there the whole time at her side.

  The tall elf leaned forward so that he came into her line of sight. “It does you credit, but you need to rest and recuperate. Now is not the moment for another attack of heroics. We have deployed other agents to watch Zal while you recover.”

  She couldn’t even turn her head. Sarasilien stood up, and Lila felt the air move as he bent over her. His long hair hung forward, like her mother’s used to. “Lila,” he said with gentle affection. “Don’t cry. You’ll be fine in a few hours.”

  Lila worked hard to try and talk. She could barely move her eyes to meet his. It was exactly the same as it had been on the awful day she woke up here the first time, two years ago, after Lila Amanda Black had officially been laid to rest, missing on assignment in Alfheim. Then she couldn’t feel or move either, and the only things that passed through her head were the replays of the final moments of her old life with the elven agent who had ended it—Zal’s hunter, Dar.

  Again she saw his face as firestars arose from the words he was speaking and fell onto her, blasting her apart in a shock of white silence.

  Sarasilien had talked to her throughout the months of her physical rebuilding and the longer months of her mental recovery, and listened to her screaming silently, able to hear her thoughts through magic when no one else could. She remembered those times with resentment and gratitude, the latter winning out.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered finally, although the words were mangled in her dry throat. “I saw him. Dar. He was in the forest at Solomon’s Folly. He shot me. He shot Zal.”

  Sarasilien had bent close to listen. His hair pooled over her neck, tickling her. She smelled the clean, evergreen scent of his skin, drank it in. “Are you sure? Zal was unhurt when he was released from here. I could find no magical traces on him.”

  “The arrowhead scratched his shoulder after it went through me. It self-destructed. And his hand—”

  “Yes?” He waited for the long age it took her to draw breath and process it.

  “There was an animal spirit, an I-space ghost. It drank from his hand. He was… we were in Zoomenon. Before Dar shot. Zal was in Zoom-enon, outside the circle, drawing elementals. He was…” But she didn’t know the name, used what she could find, “He was shooting up with them, and the ghost came.”

  Sarasilien drew back when she had finished. “This is a serious twist. I suspected that Dar might be involved. He’s the senior Jayon Daga agent in Otopia.” He paused and then added, “Elves have a history with elementals which may explain the source of Zal’s apparent addiction, though I can tell you from my brief examination of him that there is a lot more to Zal than any high-caste elven magics. I cannot say what, as he was extremely resistant to my attention. But the I-space ghost is most unusual. Do you think its presence there was a coincidence?”

  “No,” Lila whispered. But she didn’t say why she thought so—that the combination of demon magic and elvish words in the song had called it out of the Interstitial. She felt like protecting Zal from Sarasilien’s intellect, for the time being. Instead she flicked her gaze inward, to the cameras at the Arena, and saw The No Shows going on stage. “Maybe it has something to do with the demon connection?”

  Sarasilien nodded, “Maybe. If that is true…” But he got lost in thought.

  They opened with a version of “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, treated with heavy expanded Mode-X bass, funky rock guitar and curious disco backing. They started in the dark until Zal sang, “Don’t run on the lights…” and then, in a blaze of photonic glory, the crowd went mental at the still unusual sight of a High Elf singing and dancing like he grew up in a Queenstown ghetto bar.

  She flicked back to reality. “Who’s at the Arena?”

  “We sent Malachi.” Sarasilien hesitated as Lila watched the band shift into one of their own numbers. “He’s really very good, isn’t he?”

  Lila blinked. “You can use magic to listen to the concert?”

  “It is on television,” he admitted and touched the side of his head where a slim Fruitfly was pinned beside his ear, feeding images and sound directly to him. “I have Bluetooth.”

  “Oh.” She took in this unexpected adaptation of his, decided it was okay, and watched Zal, wondering if there was going to be some larger shift of elves into the waters of technology. “He’s okay.” She thought Sarasilien was going to make another Finish It crack, but he didn’t. He stood beside her and absently rested his fingertips on her forehead. She felt a trickle of magic, like cool water, run out of his andalune and down through her skull into her head. Suddenly everything seemed much calmer and lighter, and the burden of the Game and the last few hours of strange violence lifted.

  “We have arranged to move your gear from Solomon’s Folly tonight,” he said. “It will be on the tour bus when you join it later tomorrow. Jolene put up a fuss about your absence and Mr Sakamoto was extremely vociferous in his complaints, although the threat of a peremptory audit by the Otopia Revenue Service has dampened his ire. The official story is that you pursued Zal into the forest on one of his marathon training runs and were injured by a fall into a hidden ravine.” He sounded less than impressed.

  “Ravine?” Lila whispered.

  “You called for help and were taken from the accident site straight to hospital. Zal went with you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. My cover won’t hold.”

  “It is still holding, Zal and Sorcha notwithstanding, although they have no interest in outing you. Money has spoken to Mr Sakamoto and well-placed lies multiply faster than flies.”

  “They have to take Battle Standard out,” Lila pleaded.

  “They’re debugging it,” Sarasilien said. He squeezed her hand, a gesture she could feel but not reciprocate. “It’s out of my jurisdiction anyway.”

  “It is a bug,” she said, but she was too tired to say more. She watched Zal dance and prance and leap and shriek and sing like the devil himself. She could see what the elves flinched at in his expression. He was sexy, and he showed that he knew it. It was the second part they didn’t care for.

  She scanned the crowd and there, of course, like the cool creature he was, ears concealed by a bandanna and eyes made up to look human, she saw the unmistakably aloof features of Dar. He was midway back on the ground floor level, a little taller than most, and strangely still and tranquil in the general mayhem. His dark eyes were fixed intently on the stage.

  “Dar’s there,” she croaked.

  “I see him,” Sarasilien said and took his hand from hers. “Malachi will too.”

  But Lila wasn’t so sure. And there wasn’t just one agent, there were two of them. Where was the woman?

  “Rest, Lila,” Sarasilien ordered. “If you want to be usef
ul again you have to get well enough first.”

  But she hadn’t got a choice, because they wouldn’t return her insystem anyway. She watched Zal, and she watched Dar watching him, and slowly, with waves of sleep struggling to drag her down, it came to her that there was more in what was going on that she could make out, something that tugged at the edge of her consciousness but would not come forward into the light.

  Nothing happened. Zal sang and the words of his songs filtered into her dreams here and there, like a secret code appearing and vanishing from the noise.

  … sorry that I’m not calling you,

  Didn’t get the things you ask me to,

  A thousand disappointments building up into this wave…

  The music gave the words power they would never have owned alone, but when the alarm came at five a.m. and her insystem woke her up those secret meanings which had seemed so profound to her at the time dissipated like smoke.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In spite of her inclination to do the contrary Lila didn’t rush to join the tour en route up the coast as soon as it was light. One part of her training had been in the subtle arts of fine-tuning ordinary human intuition, because the near-instant subconscious processes of the mind were often as effective as any lengthy study, and her intuition kept putting pressure between her shoulder blades every time she thought of the bug she’d found the other day. She decided to take one more look, even without knowing what for.

  After checking through medical and getting a clear from Dr Williams, she put on jeans and a T-shirt and rode her bike back to the recording studio. She parked three blocks away this time and walked through the grey dawn, taking a slight dog’s leg that brought her up behind the bugged sedan. As reported by her subordinates, nobody had come to replace or claim the data tape. Lila figured that the cat charm must have alerted them to the discovery and could have even identified her using that hair it snatched, so they probably were never going to come back.

  She picked the locks and sat down in the driver’s seat, leaving the door ajar and her foot on the sill. She extended metal pincers from the fingertips of her left hand, created pliers and got a grip on the radio. With a jerk that barely jolted her sore muscles she ripped the whole unit free of the dash and then glanced around, but the noise hadn’t attracted attention. The street slept on. As if anybody there would have got up for a radio theft anyway.