Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  “‘She’?”

  “We don’t say her name, or she might appear.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  Val was feelng stupider by the second for having brought this up. “Ah, never mind. It’s just a superstition.”

  “You don’t happen to be Irish, do you?” Mihal said lightly. But the lightness seemed forced. Sutting off the conversation, he shouted, “Sonya! Erik! We’re going home.”

  They walked back along the canal bank. Val shivered in the increasingly cold air. The water glistened in the sunset. Ducks launched themselves like missiles from the far bank.

  Back at his car, he offered the Zalyotins a lift. “That’s all right, we’ll walk,” Mihal said. “It’s not far.”

  Val panicked. “Ah, I was hoping to invite myself to dinner,” he blurted with the most ingratiating smile he could manage. “There was something I wanted to talk to Greta about.”

  “You’ve always got ulterior motives,” Mihal said. Then he smiled, stiffly. The effort it cost him was obvious, but so was the fact that he was trying like hell to honor their friendship, what was left of it. “Sure, come on.”

  * * *

  “Ding, ding … no, it’s not clicking,” Greta Zalyotin said. “I think I’ve seen it before somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it. Let me have a look in Who’s Who.”

  She rose and went out to the garage where she worked from home while minding other people’s babies and toddlers. Greta worked for the IMF, too, as a tag designer. She did not keep any blank tags here, of course, so Val had never been tempted to steal them. He took them from the so-called secure vault on campus.

  Never again, so help me. Never again.

  The Zalyotins lived in a dinky little prefab house in one of Hamburg’s northern suburbs, close enough to the woods that you saw the occasional deer. The deer attracted wolves, which was Mihal’s excuse for having planted a quickstone fence that was now eight feet tall. Little Erik had the ‘stone-mason’s knack, in addition to being an incurable, and Mihal had let him shape parts of the fence into a climbing frame and a support for a swing. This was Mihal’s castle, moped in the garage, geraniums by the door, all the trappings of a normal life… all thanks to the IMF. Val felt like a complete heel for his treacheries, big and little.

  Greta came back into the room before the silence grew unbearable. She held a stapled pamphlet but she said nothing, her gaze darting back and forth between Val and Mihal.

  “You’ll never guess who I saw today, Greta!” Val tried to sound normal. “Your old mistress.”

  “Anna? She was here? Oh my God! Tell me exactly what she was wearing.”

  Before marrying Mihal, Greta had worked as a lady-in-waiting to Anna Bismarck. The daughter of a knight herself, she had abandoned a promising career and her own family for Mihal’s sake. She hung so eagerly on Val’s description of Lady Anna’s outfit and accessories that he sensed she missed that world. He shouldn’t have brought up the encounter. He changed the subject. “Have you got anything on that emblem of mine, then?”

  “Oh, that went right out of my head! Yes, I found it.”

  “You did? You’re a lifesaver, Greta.”

  She brushed crumbs off the table, spread out her pamphlet in the candlelight. “It wasn’t in Who’s Who. This is a supplement. They print them every couple of months. We call them Who’s In and Who’s Out. They’re lists of knights who’ve been newly entitled or stripped of their titles.”

  “And which is my fellow?”

  “Out. This supplement’s two years old. That’s why it took me a while to track him down.” She flipped to a color reproduction of the narwhal-and-flower badge. “Sir Gustaf Scholens. Or rather, plain old Monsieur Scholens, now.”

  Val read the accompanying text. The flower turned out to be a poppy, an unusual heraldic choice to say the least. Poppies were pretty but they were also grown illegally in Afghanistan for a very specialized market: doctors. Val had often relied on poppy-based draughts himself when ill. The narwhal was a standard heraldic symbol representing resources of the sea.

  “Formerly sworn to Haus Bismarck,” Greta said, reading over his shoulder. “I wonder what he did to get stripped of his title.”

  “I wonder, too.” Val wrote down the ex-knight’s address on the paper where he’d sketched a copy of Heinrich Ende’s brand. “I’d better be going. Greta, thanks for dinner—thanks for everything. This is a huge help.”

  Mihal did not look up to say goodbye.

  Greta followed Val out onto the porch. The door closed behind them. The porch light was off. They kissed. Val’s hands thrust around her waist. Her tongue danced into his mouth. There was a grace to her lovemaking, a sense of humor that expressed itself in audacious moments like this. This was what drove him mad, the lightheartedness of her. She seemed to have no sense of what was at stake for either of them. He stepped back. “I’ll get stopped for intoxication.”

  She laughed quietly. “Take care, Val.”

  He drove home with his guilt for cold company. Slewed his car into the underground parking garage at his apartment building, clipping a pillar. Swore at the damage and stumbled upstairs. It took him several tries to get his key into the lock.

  He finally got the door open, leant against the wall inside and lit a cigarette. Only then did he feel for the light switch.

  He stared. His cigarette fell from his lips. He felt blindly behind him for the door and slammed it, shutting himself into his destroyed apartment.

  The table lay with its legs in the air. The lamp with the blue glass shade was smashed. Jars and cans were strewn across the floor of the galley kitchen. Refrigerator door open, water dripping from the freezer tray.

  The drawers of his desk lolled open. He fell to his knees and scooped up his work notebooks, shaking them by the spines, tenderly brushing off their pages and stacking them in order. He hadn’t had any blank tags in his desk at the moment, thank God, thank God.

  He fumbled in his satchel for his pistol, taking long enough to find and cock it that if the doers were still here, they’d have had more than enough time to plug him. He held the weapon before him as he went into the bedroom. Chest-of-drawers eviscerated, wardrobe tilted across the bedframe, mattress on the floor with the springs wobbling out of knifed rents. The bathroom. Shampoo and shaving cream emptied into the shower, the lid of the toilet cistern smashed in half on the tiles.

  He stumbled back into the living-room, dug a pen out of the wreckage, and scrawled Clausura on the front door to reinforce the lock. That would buy him some time, anyway, if they came back. He hacked up some mucus and smeared it on the Latin word, feeling his terror and adrenaline drain into it along with his sickness.

  Shaking, he went into the kitchen. Both bottles of whiskey, the pricey one for company and the secret bottle of rotgut from under the sink, had been smashed, but the secret bottle still held a few drops in the curve of its shattered side. He found an unbroken mug and decanted the precious liquor into it.

  Every lightbulb in the place was broken so he sat in the dark, smoking, staring at nothing.

  Would the IMF toss his apartment like common thugs? No. They’d search the place so carefully he would never know they’d been here. Hell, for all he knew, his apartment was searched regularly. That’s why he never stole the blank tags until a couple of days before he was scheduled to travel to Britain. He visited the campus in the dead of night, under cover of his inconspicuity spell, and used magic to open all the doors and portcullises that barred access to the vault.

  If they’d noticed tags missing, they would know only a magician could have taken them. One of their own.

  But no, they didn’t know. They couldn’t. If they did, he wouldn’t be sitting here. He’d be under arrest. Or dead.

  Unless they were just trying to scare him.

  And if that was their game, whoever they were, Val had to tell Klawitz straight away.

  So why didn’t he want to?

  He finished the whiskey.
r />   * * *

  The Next Morning. October 23rd, 1979

  Val stumbled into the parking garage. Two men were leaning against his car. One of them walked towards him, heavyset in a black wool cape. Val took a pace backwards.

  “Going somewhere, Herr Sullivan?” said the man in the black cape. “How ʼbout walking, ‘stead of driving?”

  “We’ll keep you company,” said his short, thin-lipped companion.

  The black capes and squashy hats labeled them plainly. BASI loyalty enforcement used conspicuity as a psychological weapon, the way knights wore swords.

  “I’m Fischer,” the heavyset cop said. “This is Connelly.” Connelly, an Irish name.

  “Honored,” Val said.

  They walked along the street. Val lived not far from the center of Hamburg. The sidewalks were crowded with people on their way to work. The morning sun struck between the tops of the buildings, dazzling his gritty, sore eyes. “Breakfast?” Fischer said. “It’s on us.”

  Val shrugged. They went into a cheap Gasthaus. A booth magically opened up. Dirty dishes were whisked off the table. Coffee arrived. Everyone knew how to deal with loyalty enforcement: give them no cause for complaint.

  “My apartment’s a disaster area,” Val said. “I’m going to be filing for compensation. With your names attached. Just so you know.”

  Connelly dug out a billfold. He tucked a wad of notes under the edge of Val’s saucer. “That should cover it.” His German had a definite Irish lilt.

  Val counted the notes. 2000 marks. He could replace all his furniture and get his car fixed. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Fischer grinned. “If we did, would we be here?” He leafed through the menu. “Muesli with yogurt,” he said to the waitress.

  Connelly grimaced. Val smiled at this hint that Connelly did not think muesli was real food, any more than he did. He winked at the other Irishman.

  But Connelly was not that soft a touch. When the waitress had gone, he slid a dozen photographs across the table to Val, one by one.

  All the photographs showed the same city street. A street like a black canyon at the bottom of the world. People caught in motion, out of focus, limbs blurring. Those buildings were the Queen Sabrina Estate in Southwark, and the man in the middle of the pictures was always him.

  So he had been followed, after all.

  A great wave of sadness washed through him. Sorry, Alyx. I’m so sorry.

  Connelly’s small, bright eyes fixed on his face, eager, waiting …

  … waiting for him to confess.

  He found a reserve of bravado somewhere. “Been working in this town long?”

  “Why?”

  “Because the first thing you should’ve learned is: Don’t mess with the IMF.”

  “The IMF isn’t above the law.”

  “These pictures don’t prove anything.”

  Connelly’s eyes narrowed. Fischer broke in: “You know what we’re talking about, Herr Sullivan. The game’s up.”

  But they didn’t know what they were talking about. The realization almost made Val laugh. If they knew what he’d been doing in Southwark, they would’ve confronted him with it. In fact, they hadn’t asked him a single specific question. Because they didn’t want him to know how much they didn’t know.

  Their breakfasts came. Val ignored the muesli—he was too hungover to be hungry. He poured himself another cup of coffee. “You’re Irish, too, aren’t you?” he said to Connelly. “Emigrant?”

  “That’s right,” Connelly said. “The job opportunities at home are for shite.”

  “A thousand thanks for breakfast.”

  They walked him back to his building. He nodded farewell and started to unlock his car.

  Fischer’s hands closed on his arms from behind. The big man dragged him backwards, his legs uselessly pedaling against the ground, and threw him face first into one of the support pillars. Val’s nose smashed into the concrete. He heard a distinct crunch, as if he’d bitten through an eggshell. Swallowing a scream, he cowered.

  “Turn around, you fucking sicko,” Fischer said. When Val complied, the BASI agent hit him in the face.

  Fireworks of pain exploded, fading into darkness as his knees buckled. He braced his back against the pillar. Blood welled into his mouth, dripped from his chin onto the clean shirt he’d put on for work. He leaned sideways and watched it splash on the concrete.

  “Look at me,” Connelly said. “Tell us what you know. Everything you know.”

  Legs in trousers, legs in hose walked across the slot of sunlight at the top of the ramp. So near and yet so far away. Val leaned over further and vomited bile.

  Fischer kicked him while he was puking, dropping him to his hands and knees in his own vomit. “I fucking hate the IMF,” he said. “Think you’re so much better than everyone else. Think the law doesn’t apply.”

  Connelly’s footsteps approached. His shoes clinked on the concrete. He was wearing steel heel and toe plates, Val irrelevantly realized, just as they used to do in Belfast, to make their shoes last longer. “You’ve got twenty-four hours, Sullivan. After that, copies of those pictures go to the IMF. So think about that.”

  Val managed to nod.

  “So long, then.”

  Their footsteps receded.

  * * *

  Val called in sick to work. He changed his shirt, put ice on his nose to make it stop bleeding, and took a few grains of morphine. Much abused by the magicians of the conciliation department, this remedy was a more portable variant of the poppy-based draughts he used to take in Kabul. It made him feel too woozy to drive, so he walked to the station and boarded the next train for Berlin. The Kaiser’s Forest swept past, ochre, ruddy red, and evergreen.

  The train reached Berlin without ever emerging from the forest, which covered most of the Brandenburg region. Trees gave way to buildings. The railway carved through reefs of quickstone hives built from stolen or wild rattoons, the gaps in their roofs wattled with rubbish. Roads were half lake and half slag heap. Elevated highways soared through the sky, providing roofs for informal markets. When the train halted at a station, children held up handmade silk flowers, fake wristwatches, and six-legged kittens. Music saturated the air, rock and pop blended into aural sludge.

  These slums were officially described as nomad encampments, a typical passive-aggressive German recognition of the fact that their conquest of Europe had displaced a lot of people. But most of the residents had been born here, and few would ever leave.

  Skyscrapers walled out poverty. Berlin Hauptbahnhof was a bowl of human ants, hustlers targeting rubes, odors of doughnuts and skewered pork tincturing the blasts of hot air from the train tunnels. Val changed to the U-Bahn and rode out to Müggelsee, the largest of the lakes around the capital.

  He walked along the lakeshore promenade. This was an exclusive residential enclave; everyone here was rich. People stared at his nose, then quickly looked away. It looked bad, he knew. He’d pushed his septum back into place, but now it was swelling up, and he couldn’t breathe through his nostrils. The morphine deadened the pain.

  Behind the promenade, old narrow streets climbed the hills. Big homes lurked behind walls less defensive than decorative. In Germany no one was afraid. They prided themselves on it. Val found the address registered to the ex-knight Gustaf Scholens. He rang the intercom at the gate and introduced himself: “Agent Sullivan. From the IMF.”

  The name of the IMF opened most doors. It opened this one, too. A footman in a ludicrous purple and chartreuse livery, the narwhal-and-poppy badge on his chest, appeared and ushered Val through a garden full of art trees trained into arches and spires, into the foyer of a manorette.

  Left alone with a glass of sparkling wine, Val peered at the paintings on the walls. Mostly Russian. Prewar diagonalist abstracts. Modern protest art. Loot.

  After ten minutes he got impatient and wandered towards the back of the house, through rooms that were airy and brighter, big windows taki
ng advantage of a southern exposure. The house had an atmosphere of quiet busyness. The faint noise of typing came through the ceiling. Telephones rang and were answered by indistinct female voices. He emerged onto a terracotta patio. A swimming pool took up most of the back yard. A fat man was doing the crawl, breaking up the reflected sky.

  Val went down the steps. When the man reached the end of the pool, Val leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Remember me?”

  The fat man surfaced, spluttering. “No. Who the fuck are you?”

  “Imagine I haven’t got a broken nose. Then cast your mind back ten years or so.”

  Val plucked a towel off a lounger and tossed it to Stephane Flambeault as he hauled himself up the steps.

  “Ah,” Flambeault said, vigorously rubbing his greying hair. “Got it. Valery Sullivan. The butler said there was someone from the IMF waiting to see me. The dumb shit must’ve misunderstood.” He extended a damp hand encased in fat, like the rest of his body. Val might not have recognized him with the extra poundage on him, if he hadn’t already suspected who ‘Gustaf Scholens’ really was.

  They shook hands, an acknowledgement of equality that would have been unthinkable in the old days.

  * * *

  They sat in deck chairs on the patio, sipping wine. Flambeault had invited Val to stay to lunch. That would make two meals in one day Val had accepted from murderers.

  He tossed the wallet made from Ende’s skin onto the table. “I think this belongs to you.”

  Flambeault opened the wallet, picked out a coin. “One mark? This meant to be symbolic? Of what?”

  Val shook his head, which made his nose hurt. He’d forgotten he put the mark in there. Change from his train fare; the wallet had been handy. That was Alyx’s point, of course. “Look at the wallet itself.”

  Flambeault did. His shaggy grey-and-black eyebrows went up. He dropped the wallet on the table, just as Val had done when he realized what it was. “OK. Tell me where the hell you got that.”