Against A Dark Background (15 page)

‘Good,’ Miz said. The muffled engines of the powerboat below revved up; it started to drift forward, then its engines screamed and it pushed away across the small waves, spray billowing from its hull as it accelerated and rose up on two sets of A-shaped legs to reveal itself as a hydrofoil.

Miz and Dloan joined Sharrow at the rail; the black hydrofoil powered into the night, twin blue-pink cones of light pulsing from its engines. Dloan held the metal box Lebmellin had called a Mind Bomb - its top hinged back - and one of the guns the black-dressed men had carried.

`Look,’ he said to Miz, while Sharrow squinted at the dark water. Dloan opened up the stock of the rifle, pulling out some wires.
Ordinary synaptic stunners with a radio-controlled off switch.’ Dloan held up the Mind Bomb, which was empty save for a single tiny piece of electronic circuitry.
And a radio transmitter . . .’

Miz looked, mystified, from the empty box to Dloan’s face.

`I think I can see somebody …’ Sharrow said, shading her eyes.

`Hello!’ a faint, female voice said from the waves below.

‘Zefla?’ Dloan said, setting the gun and box on the deck.

A voice floated back sarcastically. ‘No, but I can take a message.’

Sharrow thought she could just see Zefla, her blonde head bobbing in the water. ‘What are you doing down there?’ she called.

‘Waiting for a rope, perhaps?’

‘If you’re going to be cheeky you can look for Lebmellin. He’s down there somewhere. Can you see him?’

`No. About that rope . . .’

Just before they lowered her a rope ladder, Lebmellin bumped into Zefla. His body went drifting past face down, his distorted skull oozing blood.

Zefla held on to the corpse for a moment. Miz frowned, looking down. `What are you doing, Zef?’ he called.

‘Checking the double-crossing son-of-a-bitch for the emeralds,’ Zef shouted back.

‘Na, don’t bother,’ Miz told her. ‘They were fakes anyway.’

Zefla made a growling noise. Sharrow gave Miz a hard look, and he beamed a broad smile at her.

‘Isn’t this great?’ he said, sighing happily. ‘Just like the old days!’

Sharrow shook her head, secured the ladder and threw the end down to Zefla.

They helped her over the rail; she was dressed in knickers and a short black under-slip.

‘You all right?’ Sharrow asked her.

‘Oh’, fine,’ Zefla said, dripping. ‘Chief Invigilator’s been killed, his yacht’s sunk and I was kidnapped.’ She started to wring her hair out. ‘How’s your evening been?’

‘Tell you later,’ Miz said, turning from one of his hired men. ‘Jam security and Marines on the way,’ he told Sharrow.

She shoved the Addendum into her satchel. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Their route took them down into the bowels of the ship and past a couple of Miz’s nervous-looking hired hands; he told the guards to stop anybody else from following them.

A gangplank just above sea level led from the stem of the ferry into a larger passenger ship; as they crossed they heard shooting and the sound of helicopters. Miz kicked the end of the gangplank into the water after they’d passed.

They ran through the echoing, deserted space that had been the vessel’s engine room. On the far side was a crudely welded-in doorway, half-burnt paint still peeling from annealed metal near where the flame had burned.

A short corridor of large-bore pipe led to a similar door; when Miz closed it behind them they were at the bottom of a huge, tall, clangingly echoing space; naked metal walls towered into the darkness above. A single yellow bulb shone weakly,, suspended at the end of a skinny wire descending from the shadows. The air smelled stale and metallic.

‘Old oil tanker,’ Miz said breathlessly, leading the way across the waterpuddled floor of the huge tank. Their shadows swung across the tank floor like the hands of a clock. ‘Boat’s in a dock a few tanks along.’

‘Something fast, I hope,’ Zefla said.

‘Nup,’ Miz said. ‘The hired hands have chose; we’ve got an ancient sailboat with an electric motor. It’ll take us to a marina on shore. Not what they’ll be looking for at all.’

‘You hope,’ Sharrow said.

They jogged on, leaping the I-beams that were the vessel’s ribs and ducking through a couple of torch-burnt doors through to other tanks.

A pain hit Sharrow in the lower ribs, making her gasp. She ran on, holding her side. ‘You okay?’ Zefla asked.

Sharrow nodded, motioned the others on. ‘Just a stitch; keep going.’

Then the lights went out. ‘Shit,’ Sharrow heard Miz say. The sound of footsteps in front of her slowed.

The faintest of glows came from ahead, light spilling from a couple of tanks beyond. ‘Probably just a fuse, not enemy action,’ Miz said. ‘Watch out for the I-beams. Ouch!’

‘Find one?’ Zefla inquired.

There was a muffled explosion somewhere behind them, followed by a distant banging noise. ‘Oh fuck!’ Miz shouted.

‘Just one of those nights really, isn’t it?’ Zefla said.

‘Yeah,’ Miz said. ‘I bet we get to Aïs City and it’s raining. Well, come on.’

They ran. The pain in Sharrow’s abdomen got worse and her legs started to hurt as well: stabbing pains piercing her with every step.

‘Sharrow?’ she heard Dloan say in the darkness, as the silhouette of Miz climbed through to another tank.

‘Here,’ she gasped as she staggered. ‘Keep going, dammit; I’m here, I’m here.’

The others drew further ahead. They crossed another tank, stumbling up to the I-beams and splashing through unseen puddles of water. Her legs burned with pain; she gritted her teeth, tears coming unbidden to her eyes. Zefla then Dloan made it through the door to the next tank. The pain was getting worse. She heard one of them asking her something.

‘Keep going!’ she yelled, fighting the urge to scream, terrified of what was happening to her but determined to fight it.

Suddenly it was as though her head was being crushed in a vice, and a wave of agony swept over her from shoulders to calves, as though she was being skinned alive. She staggered and stopped, tasting blood in her mouth.

There was a noise of metal sliding heavily over metal, then a sharp detonation of pain inside the back of her head. She crumpled up, falling to the cold steel deck, unconscious before she hit.

She knew she hadn’t-been out long; maybe a minute or two. There was a distant banging noise coming from somewhere, and she thought she heard somebody shouting her name. The pain had gone. She was hunched, fetal, on the metal, lying on her right side in a shallow puddle. The opened satchel lay in another puddle a metre away. Her knees and forehead ached and it felt like she’d bitten her tongue. She had been sick; the vomit lay spreading quietly into the puddle in front of her. She groaned and wobbled upright, her hair flapping wetly against her face. She pulled the opened satchel out of its puddle, then spat and looked around. It was suddenly very bright in the tank; brighter than it had been before the lights went out.

She looked behind her. Sitting on a pair of gaudily coloured deckchairs were two identical young men. They had fresh, scrubbed, pale coppery-pink faces beneath entirely bald scalps, and they were dressed very plainly in tight grey suits. Their irises were yellow. One held what looked like a naked plastic doll. She had a vague feeling she recognised the two men. They smiled, together.

She looked away and closed her eyes, but when she looked back they were still there. It had gone very quiet in the tank. A narrow metal stairway against one hull wall led up in a series of staggered flights towards the ship’s deck level.

She looked at the tank’s two doors; both were sealed by metal shutters attached to some sort of sliding mechanism. What looked like a large pressurised gas cylinder lay on the floor of the tank by the side of the two young men; a hose snaked away towards the bulkhead leading to the tank she’d been heading for. She could hear a hissing noise. She gagged, doubling up and feeling in her jacket for her gun.

It wasn’t there.

A stunning pain in her back and shoulders forced a scream from her and brought her arching back up. It was gone almost in the same instant; she fell back into the puddle, staring up at the harsh white lights beaming down from the top of the tank.

‘Looking for your gun, Lady Sharrow?’ one of the pleasant-looking young men said. His voice echoed round the tank.

She forced herself to sit up again. The two young men were smiling broadly, sitting with their legs crossed at exactly the same angle. The overhead lights reflected off their bald heads and made their golden eyes glow. One young man still held the doll, the other her gun.

She remembered now where she had seen one of them before; on the glass shore of Issier, in the vehicle disguised as a beachcomber.

They smiled once more, in unison. ‘Hello again,’ said the one with the gun. ‘Thank you for dropping by.’ He smiled broadly and made a stirring, circling motion with the gun. ‘You had to leave so precipitously on our last meeting, Lady Sharrow. I felt we didn’t really get a chance to talk, so thought I’d arrange another get-together.’

‘Where are my friends?’ she said hoarsely.

‘In their little boat by now, I’d imagine,’ the man with the gun said. ‘Or alternatively, gassed and dead on the other side of that wall.’ He nodded, smiling, at the bulkhead.

‘What do you want?’ she said tiredly. The smell of her own sickness filled her nose for a moment, making her gag again.

The two young men glanced at each other; it was like watching somebody looking in a mirror. ‘What do we want?’ the same one said again. ‘Gosh; nothing we haven’t already got, in a sense, I suppose.’ He put her gun in an inside pocket of his plain grey jacket, drew out the Crownstar Addendum, smiled happily at the necklace, then slipped it back inside his jacket again. ‘Got the bauble, which is the main thing.’ He grinned. ‘And of course we have you, pretty lady.’ He nodded to his twin who held the doll; he poked the tiny figure sharply between the legs with one finger.

Incredible, impossible pain surged out of her groin and belly. She screamed, doubling up again and moaning as she quivered, convulsing across the deck.

The pain ebbed gradually.

She lay there, breathing hard, her heart thumping. Then she crawled round until she could see the two young men again. The one who’d been doing the talking was laughing silently.

‘Bet that smarted, what?’ He took a small kerchief from a breast pocket and wiped his eyes. He put it away and composed himself. ‘Now then, to business.’ He made a cylinder of his fist, put it to his mouth and cleared his throat theatrically.

‘The body is a code, my dear Lady Sharrow, and we have yours. We can do what my attractive assistant here has just done to you, anytime, anywhere.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘And if you don’t do as you’re told, like a good little Sharrow, we’ll have to spank you.’ He looked at the other young man. ‘Won’t we?’

The other one nodded, and flicked a finger at the rump of the doll.

‘No, please-’ she heard herself say before the pain hit.

It was as though she’d been whacked on the behind by the flat of a sword with a blow fit to break legs. She felt her mouth gape as she gagged again, her face down against the cool metal of the tank floor. Tears squeezed from her eyes.

‘Thank you for the necklace,’ the young man said matter-of-factly. ‘We really do appreciate the efforts you and mister Kuma went to to secure it, I want you to know that. But we do feel you could do even better, you know? You see, we rather think you might be intending to look for another Antiquity. Can you guess what it is?’

She looked up, her breath quick and shallow. She had to blink hard to see them properly, still sitting there on their deck-chairs in their severe grey suits, their legs crossed, the bald pates gleaming. She couldn’t talk. She shook her head instead.

‘Oh, come on now; you must be able to,’ the young man chided. ‘I’ll give you a clue; you’ve already found one, it’s the last of its kind, and everybody but everybody who’s anybody wants one. Come on, it’s easy!’

She lowered her head to the tank floor again, nodding.

‘It’s also,’ the young man continued, ’supposed to be the only weapon ever made with a semblance of a sense of humour.’

She brought her head up. ‘The Lazy Gun,’ she said, her voice weak.

‘That’s right!’ the young man said brightly. ‘The Lazy Gun!’ He sat forward in the deck-chair, smiling broadly. ‘Now of course we recognise that you have your own reasons for wanting to find this remarkable - and now unique - weapon, and will probably want to turn the Gun over to our friends the Huhsz, in the hope that they’ll stop trying to catch and kill you. An understandable desire on your part, of course, but one - sadly - that does somewhat conflict with the plans the interests that we represent have for the weapon.

‘In brief, we would far prefer that you give the Gun to us. Now we’ll be letting you know the details of this little scheme nearer the time, but that’s given you the general idea. You give the Gun to us, or we’ll be terribly upset, and we’ll let you know it, too, via one of these small but perfectly formed mannequins: The young man waved one hand towards the doll. ‘Got that?’

She nodded, swallowing and then coughing. ‘Yes,’ she croaked. ‘Oh, and may we counsel you not to run to that ghastly cousin of yours? Even the resourceful Geis won’t be able to help you against the people we work for, or protect you well enough to prevent us getting in touch with you through the mannequin. Besides which, we do have plans for old Geisy as well, actually. So all in all we really do think you’d be best advised to stick with us. What do you say?’

He paused, then put one hand to his ear. ‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘Didn’t hear you there . . .’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right.’

‘Super. We’ll be in touch again, Lady Sharrow,’ he told her. ‘Every now and again we’ll make our presence felt. Just to keep you convinced this hasn’t been a dream, and we are quite serious.’ He smiled and spread his arms wide. ‘I really would urge you to do your utmost to cooperate with us, Lady Sharrow. I mean, just think; supposing these started to fall into the hands of your enemies?’ He looked at the doll lying in the hands of his twin, then gazed back into her eyes, shaking his head. ‘Life could become very unpleasant indeed, I’d imagine. You agree, I take it?’