Liar, liar, liar, liar. And I’d come back without a tan, too. Just tell them you were listening to talks the whole time, Louis’ assistant had said. A strong implication of: Do I have to think of everything? Can you not lie on your own?A Chambers Labs subsidiary was presenting at the conference in Orlando, I had noticed: Lazuli Software Solutions.
Johnny was everywhere, she was like mold spores in the air, nowhere was free of her. You couldn’t take one breath without drawing her in, having her grow inside you. Making you sick.
A nasty realization had built while I writhed unsleeping on the plane, and it worsened now, as I joined the line of people waiting to get in, shivering in the cool fog. If it really had been Sofia, her dodging the camera suggested she didn’t want to be spotted there. Yet she must have known the ceremony would be filmed—not only that, but broadcast worldwide. Millions, even billions of people must have seen that footage. And she knew that, she would have known that. So why had she gone? What was she up to? And why hadn’t she told her dad?
I hadn’t seen her in person for months, not since my last training trip to Chicago; she’d been distant, even cool, yet somehow had contrived to run into me, with or without her dad, about a dozen times a day. Afterwards, she kept messaging me on ICQ, a half-hour of cautious small talk each time. We were, I thought, in that uneasy space between strangers and friends, but since I’d never really had friends except Johnny (ow—that stab of hate again), I couldn’t tell.
The beams of the lightshow stabbed up through the fog like knives, a guard of honour as I approached the front of the line. Like photos of royal weddings, walking under the bridge of blades. Good thing Louis’s assistant had called to get me a tux: under laughably heavy coats, many trimmed with fur or velvet, most people were in tuxedoes too, or else floor-length dresses in a dark rainbow of hues. I hoped no one would look at my boots.
The lady taking names with her laptop stared up at me far too long. I met her eye, daring her to say something, tell me I didn’t belong there. Go on. You’ll see. The Society is full of these little tricks.
“Nicholas Prasad,” I repeated, leaning down. After she looked at my driver’s license, she gave me a paper wristband and waved me through. I swiped my sleeve over my face, barely dislodging the clammy mix of perspiration and precipitation.
God, why had I agreed to this bullshit? Some vague impulse fueled by who-knew-what, something I hadn’t been able to resist, giving the impression that it was not large but fast-moving, too quick to dodge, about how a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, but was this, in fact, it?
If it was, I decided, what a man had to do was incredibly bad planning.
All the same, what was the worst that could happen? Two girls might be mad at me, and I could call Louis back and confirm that his darling only child was fine. And then home on Monday, with Society-provided memorabilia, mouse ears and rocketships and little bits of gator-shaped tat and glitz. Job safe. Everything fine, and the boat that I had set rocking with my mistake (not to mention ratting out Sofia) would be settled again, safe again.
I walked under a stone arch into a cross-road, thick uneven walls against a clouded sky, feather-soft and without a single star. People milled, murmured, smoked, laughed. There was a strong smell of money; you got it at Johnny’s place sometimes, and always at her mother’s house. Cigars, cryo-treatments, Botox, lip fillers, hair transplants, expensive perfumes and colognes, aromatherapy orthotics, drycleaning chemicals, real leather, jewels kept in storage. I didn’t have that. Would they sniff me out, turn on me? Rented tux, hotel soap. Smell of jetlag. My watch still on Edmonton time.
Metal signposts pointed to PRISONS OF WAR and WAY OUT, mostly obscured now by large laminated sheets that said CHAMBERS REACTOR GALA FEBRUARY 6 2004 with a big reflective arrow.
I liked the tall blocky towers, their windows crisscrossed with lead. The stones were all different colours, like camo-print. It wouldn’t help if you were being invaded, I thought, but maybe the visual effect would screw up the aim of folks with projectile weapons. How old was this place, anyway? Its age pressed down like the weight of a thunderstorm. I have everything you don’t, it seemed to say: mass, history, dignity, culture. And by ‘you’ I thought it meant both me and where I was from. No castles back home. Rightly so, I wanted to explain: the land was swindled or taken at gunpoint from people who neither built nor needed them.
Need has nothing to do with it, I pictured the castle replying, and I will be here for thousands of years more, needed or no.
Conversely, I didn’t like the arches, which seemed too heavy to stay up, itching to fall on some tourist. Indoors was a relief despite the monumental slap of heat. Unofficially, I knew, the party filled the entire grounds, and I had seen a few forlorn-looking string quartets and appetizer stations outside in the fog, but in practice, it was cold and grim enough that everyone had crowded into the Great Hall.
The room was half-painted in deep red, half panelled with wood; the stained-glass windows had been strung with small white party lights, bringing their colours to life. Polished armour and dozens of weapons hung on the walls, baroque blades and spikes arranged like fireworks. That was good, actually, very handy. When either Sofia or Johnny started asking the hard questions, I could just run myself through. Die of blood loss before dying of embarrassment. True, the Society would lose its deposit on the tux, but...
Before I really realized what I was looking at, my body jolted minutely, like the electrical shock of a dry winter day. The hall was lined with nooks like restaurant booths, which I figured were off-limits during tourist hours but were now open; and one of these was occupied by Johnny, lit all gold and dark like an old painting under several skinny standing lights. She was being simultaneously photographed and filmed by two people, and interviewed by three others, pivoting back and forth at their conflicting cues and the demands of the lenses.
I parked myself behind a big guy in a white jacket who was offering trays of what Johnny called ‘tiny bits of junk on sticks’ (her nemesis; she always ate before parties). The crowd eddied like one of those fancy aquariums in the mall, deep water of tuxedoes, bright coral of gowns, jewelry like darting fish. Hm. Save up, get a suit like that back home: silky blue or green or violet under the lights, black in the shadows. Couple of iridescent ties. Start going to clubs.
Some people stared despite my tux, but after I snagged a glass of champagne, I abruptly achieved invisibility; their gazes hit and slid off. I held my nose over the cold skinny glass, enjoying the tickle of the popping bubbles.
The lighting left the musicians (six of them—what was that? a hexet? a sextet?) and the high ceiling in darkness. In the center of the room, someone had poised a spotlight on something I couldn’t see through the crowd, glassy-looking, maybe an ice sculpture. Like that one Nobel-watching party we’d gone to at the university, where we had gotten kicked out after she—
That sting again. Stop it, stop remembering her as human. It was all lies, goddammit. You know that. Stick to your job.
I scanned the room for Sofia and gingerly let my champagne soak into the apparently parched scrubland of my tongue; it had no taste at all, only texture, as if I had drunk a mouthful of tacks. Two mouthfuls later I was thirstier than before. I glared at it.
“Want some smoked salmon?”
The fourth sip exited my mouth in a fine mist; Johnny evaded it absentmindedly, and held up her plate.
“Come off it,” she said. “Like it’s so shocking to see me here, with my name all over the signs. What are you doing here? How did you get in? I didn’t put your name on the list.”
“Don’t just sneak up on people like that!”
“Uh huh. Should I call security or what?”
I glanced around in automatic alarm. The security I had expected, her assistant Rutger, who first of all didn’t like me, and secondly was about twice as big as me on every axis, was nowhere to be seen. The two dark-suited people behind her were unfamiliar—stiffly alert, watching m
e with Rutger-caliber disdain.
She followed my gaze. “He’s back at the hotel. Wanted to review some data. You know Elizabeth and Wayne.”
I nodded as if I did. While I waited to see which of my various sphincters had either fused shut from shock or were on the verge of letting go, she complacently made a tiny burrito out of a pancake, some smoked salmon, a scoop of caviar, and pickled onion. “Here. Eat this.”
“Where did you get this?”
“Buffet at the back,” she said, expertly wrapping up another one. “Asked the caterers for it. Can’t stand that little-shit-on-sticks situation.”
I glared downwards. Her boyish, Gap-commercial haircut had been recently touched up; the ends seemed fresher, brassier, like fine wire. If she’d done her own makeup, she’d done a piss-poor job of it; the gold glitter on her eyes had escaped into her eyebrows and even her nose and chin. Under a weirdly short but long-sleeved sweater, her knee-length black dress was belted with a chain of Oreo-sized golden discs. It made me think of ancient Greece: a famous vase, maybe, or a picture in one of the kids’ books.
Her eyes, steadily meeting mine, were the same as ever: that sinister green, the green of a Disney villain’s eyes, if anything more yellow than I remembered. Sickly, even inhuman. Like an animal. I reached inside myself, felt for the old love, the new hate, and felt only revulsion, the instinctive recoiling from a monstrous stranger who had stolen a beloved face, a familiar voice, and now wore them proudly, showing them off to the horrified survivors.
“Okay, listen,” I said.
“Listening.” She took my champagne glass and drained it, then handed it to a passing server without looking.
Something warm slid through my arm and grasped my wrist, and this time I yelped out loud and jerked backwards into the wood panelling. The thing clung like a tentacle, but in the split second before I drew my fist back (good God: to do what, exactly?) I realized what was happening and tried to recover, picturing how it must have looked—the squawk, the sluggish flinch and twitch, the noise (had I imagined it?) as my head hit the wood. I hoped no one had been filming us.
Face hot, double-0 status revoked, I crooked my elbow where Sofia had taken it, and managed something that I hoped looked like a smile. She was a shimmering presence at my side, like a mirror, or those polished refractor things the ancient Greeks or whoever aimed at ships during wars to burn them up; I couldn’t look directly at her.
“Sofia!” Johnny said. “What a nice surprise! And holy shit, your earrings. And your dress!”
“Thank you! I just bought it this afternoon, especially for tonight!”
“Glgk,” I said.
Sofia went on, smoothly, “And thank you for being flexible about the guest list! Security is so important these days.”
“Yeah, can’t be too careful. Any sort of riff-raff might just wander in.”
To her credit, Sofia didn’t even glance at me. “I agree, you do not want questionable people at something like this.”
As they chatted, I slowly put it together: two Society members were supposed to have been here tonight, but couldn’t make it (I wondered if Sofia had pushed them into the ocean). Sofia had been sent unexpectedly at the last moment instead, but Louis had been unable to make it.
“Everyone was very insistent that the Society be represented tonight. It’s an historic event! And you were kind enough to ensure we got in. And of course,” she added, squeezing my arm, “I hope you do not mind that I used the other ticket for my love here, even though he is not with us! I was hoping we could get some photos while we are all dressed up.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Two surprises for the price of one. Oh, you should go pose with the armour!” Johnny pointed back at the alcove she’d been in. “The light is still set up, the photographers are paid all night, and you get the painting too. You’ll just have to wait for... who is that, is that the Princess of Monaco?”
“No, that’s her sister.”
“Doesn’t that make her a princess too?”
“Not after what happened last week.”
I wondered if this was death, if my soul was even now leaving my body, floating up into the ceiling, passing through it sadly into the sky (or, let’s be realistic, down into the Earth’s core to be incinerated). How was I supposed to figure out what Sofia was doing now? Louis wouldn’t care that I’d been set up somehow, or by who. He’d just kill me. If you could kill someone who was already dead, which…
Sofia surreptitiously pinched my wrist, producing a bolt of pain from my fingertips to my ear. “Sounds good,” I croaked.
“Well, you both look like a million bucks,” Johnny said, reaching out surreptitiously to tug up one side of my cummerbund. “You should totally get some nice pictures. Especially you, Nick; you’re always on the wrong side of the camera, you got all those photos of the kids and none of you. Your mom deserves at least one nice shot up there somewhere. Like, one.”
“Mmpt.”
“And maybe Sofia has a comb you can use?”
“Eckff.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” Sofia chuckled.
Belatedly—possibly because, as far as I could tell, I was dead—Sofia’s absolute conniving cleverness dawned on me. How else would you explain me being there? Her, you could explain. She wasn’t a Society member, but she was a representative all the same; in fact, Louis had always tried to keep her as far from their business as possible. She was just the eternal and permissible coworker’s kid, allowed at their events and parties since she had been little, the way the dealers and bartenders had fondly looked away when Mom used to bring me to her shifts at the casino.
I realized that I had been expecting, for at least a couple of minutes, to see something resembling irritation or jealousy on Johnny’s face, and then was annoyed at myself, and then was annoyed that I was annoyed. I tried to freeze my face into an expression of pleasant unsurprise.
Sofia announced, “Let’s go see if the photographer is free!”
But a moment after we wandered away, the smile dropped off her face with an audible thud. “What are you doing here, Nicholas?”
“Uh, having a panic attack.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “You can always trust boys to have the stupidest answer out of a choice of millions... I recommend you try again. And fast.”
“Are you about done? Jesus. Your dad sent me. Obviously.”
“What? Why?”
I blinked. Had I not said obviously? I was sure I had. “Because he was worried about you. Because he called campus, and they said you dropped out. Why do you think?”
“I assumed you were here for her. Why wouldn’t you be?”
“Lots of reasons,” I said.
“My father has no need to send... nannies after me. I’m not a child.”
“Nobody said you were! Calm down. He’s worried, he says you were lying to him. About being in school. They said you dropped out. He was going to come find you himself, but he couldn’t make it. What are you trying to pull, anyway? They’re not gonna do anything to you, but who even knows what they’ll do to me?”
She blinked, having clearly stopped listening to me halfway through my rant. The anger drained away from her face, leaving a terrible uncertainty and betrayal, the expression of a kid promised something only to have it suddenly yanked away. A moment later it was gone, and she was all business again.
Somehow, even in formalwear, she looked businessy too: the long, silvery-blue dress was cut like a suit at the top, and she was wearing heels so high we were eye to eye. Makeup too, dark lipstick and eyeshadow, metallic on her deep brown skin. Her long hair was tied back, the curls in front ferociously bobbypinned; the crisscrossed metal resembled a secret language. A cuneiform curse, no doubt.
But her face. Don’t lose track of that. Saying into the silence: He sent you? After all I did to rig it so that he would be here tonight?
I said, “He said he was going to send his new... what do you call it. Secretary?”
“Yeah, Sherwood or whoever. Is that his first name or his last name? Anyway, Louis thinks he’s too new. So he sent me. So it would be less weird.”
It’s still weird, her sneer said. “Let’s look over here instead!” she announced, pulling me further towards the perimeter of the room, then hissed, “I’m on spring break. I’m allowed to go on holiday, you know!”
I shook my arm free. “Look, are you going to tell me what you’re doing or not?”
“Nothing! This is unbelievable. He sent you all this way, and you—you said yes, you agreed to come all this way! To what, spy on me? It’s nothing, I got a cheap flight, and I had plans with friends, they did not work out this week, then I decided I would still come by myself.”
“Okay,” I said. “You know. For the weather. Which is so nice. In Scotland. In February.”
“People don’t travel for the weather, Nicholas.”
Johnny was wandering back towards us, the blonde head bumping through the crowd. Like the shark from Jaws, but little. I held down a laugh that I knew would come out in a donkey screech.
“Now knock it off or I’ll tell her everything,” Sofia whispered, and smiled again, brilliantly, as she took my hand.
“Me? You’re the one who—”
“Yeah, and on top of the bull,” Johnny was saying even before she reached us, “we’re actually being audited by the IARE too. It started off as just a health and safety thing, but they’ve got the entire ethics department involved now. They think multiple facilities are falsifying and publishing data. Can you believe it?”
“Incredible!” Sofia shook her head.
I pursed my lips. Johnny had been audited before, though mostly for safety stuff; it was both horrifying and unsurprising how many accidents she’d had, apparently thinking that safety standards were something for other people. They hadn’t found anything at her facilities as a result, but at a minimum I knew she’d been burned by acid, had a few solvent inhalation incidents, got blasted with one of her early particle accelerators (luckily at low power), been on the sharp end of ten or twelve explosions—I’d lost count—poisoned herself, fallen off ladders, cabling, catwalks, rigging, and bookshelves in her ridiculous house-slash-laboratory, been electrocuted about six times, and Chem-Bot had accidentally sampled part of her arm once. And that entirely left out the dozens of incidents where genetically-screwed-up insects and plants had escaped ‘containment’—usually a carelessly-lidded plastic tub, as I’d discovered more than once while scavenging for a snack.
A Broken Darkness Page 3