Against A Dark Background (38 page)

The stom didn’t react for a moment. The King crept forward towards it, spray-can held out in front of him.

The stom shook itself; its great long head came up. The King stopped, then stepped back. The people around Cenuij went very still. The stom opened its mouth and made a yawning motion. The King sprayed gas at its head for five, ten seconds. The stom shook its head, then opened its mouth and roared. It reared up on its legs until it almost touched the top of the cavern, unfolding its wings as its bellow echoed through the nest; stom throughout the roost stirred and came awake; two on either side of the King woke up too, their snouts waving in the air.

People started to shout and scream. The boy on his lap tried to force his head up into Cenuij’s chin so he could see better; he rammed the boy’s head back down, fastening himself to the slit.

Run!’ people shouted.
Run, your Majesty!’ The stom in front of the King wobbled and staggered forwards; he raised the gas canister and squirted more gas at it; the beast reared upright again and stood swaying. The two stom on either side rose up too; others at the back of the cavern lumbered off their nest-bowls, shuffling forward, necks craning, trying to move down to the middle of the roost and blocking the view from the rear of the cave.

`Guards!’ somebody shouted. Cenuij felt a delicious thrill in his guts. The boy on his lap started to cry. The King’s stom -just visible above the heads of the other animals - fell slowly forward and disappeared. There was a scream from the middle of the cavern. The floor shuddered. People screamed and shouted all around Cenuij. He clenched his fists. The boy squirmed out from his lap and ran away through the forest of legs.

Royal Guardsmen ran into the roost chamber, guns drawn. They fired at the animals nearest them, guns roaring and snapping; bullets and laser bolts burst amongst the crowded animals, producing screams and roars and clouds of smoke and vaporised skin. The three rearmost stom whirled round and charged the guardsmen, who kept on firing but had to retreat. Two stom fell howling to the ground, heads ruptured, pumping blood; one crushed a guardsman under it, another wounded animal grabbed one of the men, picked him up and tossed him against the curved wall of the chamber with one blurring shake of its head. A fusillade of shots tore open its chest and it fell. Behind it, the push towards the cavern mouth became a rush, then a stampede; the floor vibrated to the thudding, thumping steps of the giant beasts and the air was filled with their cries and the noise of the guards’ guns as they advanced again.

The people around Cenuij yelled and shouted and stamped their feet. He pushed his face against the slit, trying to hide his smile.

The firing went on, flat-sounding in the soft-walled roost. Three more stom fell as they crowded round the far end of the cavern, calling and screaming as they piled up there, trying to escape.

`The King! The King!’ people cried as the guardsmen fought their way across the fallen bodies of the stom to the centre of the cavern.

`The blockhead’s dead, you brainless toadies,’ Cenuij whispered.

The last few of the stom able to escape did so, launching themselves from the cavern mouth into the late dusk light. Dead and dying animals lay bleeding or struggling to move on the floor of the roost. The guardsmen reached the middle of the cavern.

Cenuij composed his face into an expression of abject grief and got ready to look away from the slit. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes for a moment.

`Look!’ a voice cried. He opened his eyes again.

Something moved above the guardsmen, on the wall of the nest-space near the roof. A tiny figure, waving.

The King!’ somebody shouted.
Hurrah!’

A great cheer went up.

Cenuij stared, appalled.

The tomb was a part-buried black granite cube that had been placed, on Gorko’s instructions, on a hill beyond the formal gardens of house Tzant.

She remembered when the tomb had first been emplaced; one of the old servants had taken her back out after the ceremony so that she could see it again without everybody else around.

The duenna told her that the tomb was important and that grandfather Gorko had wanted her to see it like this. Neither Sharrow nor the duenna could guess why. Then they had gone back to the house, for cakes.

The other children had always been frightened of the black sarcophagus, because half-way up one side there was a small smoke-glass window and if you got a torch you could shine it in and see the embalmed corpse of old grandpa Gorko sitting in his best scuffed ballistic hides on his favourite motor-bike, crouched over the handlebars as though still alive, his black helmet and mirrored visor reflecting the torch-light and seeming to stare back out at you.

Most of the children her age ran away shrieking when they saw the old man’s cadaver, but she recalled thinking it was nice that Gorko had been put in a place where the little smoke-glass window showed the valleys and hills of the house parklands, so that grandfather could still have a pleasant view, even in death. And she never forgot that grandfather Gorko had wanted her to see the tomb specially, even if she still didn’t understand why.

When - as happened every season or two - her father’s chasing pack of debtors drew too close to his heels and he had to leave the latest hotel in the middle of the night and head for the temporary sanctuary of Tzant, she’d always liked to visit the tomb on the hill. She’d climb up one of the nearby trees, pull herself along an over-reaching limb and drop down to sit on tap of the sarcophagus, listening to the trees in the wind and looking out in the same direction as her grandfather.

In the shade of the trees, the black granite was cool to the touch on all but the sunniest days, and sometimes she would lie or sit there for hours, just thinking. There was a sentence - just three words - engraved on top of the tomb; it said THINGS WILL CHANGE in hand-sized letters cut a finger deep into the granite. People were a little puzzled by the words; it was neither a recognised saying nor a maxim of Gorko’s. But it was what he had wanted for his epitaph, and so there it was.

Every now and again she would clear the fallen leaves, broken twigs and dead insects from the little water-filled trenches of the tomb’s inscription. One winter she had prized the letter-shaped lumps of ice out of those trenches and thrown them one-by-one at Breyguhn, who was chucking snowballs up at her from the ground; one of the thrown letters had gashed Breyguhn’s cheek and she had run off screaming back to the house.

She lay back on the cool stone, her head cushioned by her coat. She hadn’t been up here for years. She looked up at the pattern of darkness the coppery leaves made against the blue-green sky, feeling the warm breeze move across her arms and face. She closed her eyes, remembering the first time she’d made love in the open air, a few months earlier in a bower in a shady, out-of-the way courtyard buried in Yada’s sprawling history faculty. That had been one evening during Fresher’s Week, she thought. She tried to remember the young man’s name but couldn’t.

She put a hand out to feel the chiselled letters of the cube’s strange inscription.

There was talk of the tomb being moved when the World Court sold house Tzant next year. She hoped it would be allowed to stay where it was. Probably some other noble family would buy the estate, or some newly rich person or big company, but she couldn’t see why they would object to letting her grandpa rest peacefully in his chosen tomb, looking out over a favourite view. She could understand somebody wanting to make the place their own if they moved in, but would they really grudge one small corner of the estate for the remains of the man who’d built it?

She closed her eyes. Yes, she supposed they might. The size of the tomb and the fact it was out of the way were both irrelevant details; it was a symbol, and the physical size of a symbol had no bearing on its importance - it was the thought that mattered.

Today hadn’t gone too badly so far, despite all her fears. She had managed to avoid both Geis and Breyguhn at the funeral; Geis had arrived late anyway, lucky to have got compassionate leave at all for somebody who hadn’t been a close relation, and Breyguhn had been as concerned to keep out of Sharrow’s way as Sharrow had been to ignore her.

Sharrow hadn’t seen Geis since the ball in his father’s house at Siynscen over a year earlier. He’d called her numerous times since then, especially since she’d gone to university, but she’d always found ways of avoiding meeting him face-to-face. She told herself that this was for his own good; if he had become infatuated with her at the ball, then - given that she had no intention of taking things further - it was as well that he had time to forget about her and find somebody else. She still occasionally felt herself flush when she thought about that night.

She didn’t regret having let Geis dance with her, and still did not believe she had done anything wrong, but to somebody watching it might have looked as though she was throwing herself at her cousin, and that really was embarrassing. As for the thought that it might have appeared she was only setting out to beguile him to thwart Breyguhn; that was worse.

Lying there on the polished black rock of the sarcophagus, Sharrow rubbed at one leg, remembering that shock of cold pain two seasons earlier.

She hadn’t seen Breyguhn since the northern winter and that mean-spirited attack in the skidder rink. Brey had gone to finishing school and her father had continued to gamble, working himself further and further into debt and despair; both of them were people she felt happy to ignore.

She heard the voices as though part of a dream.

It was Geis and Breyguhn.

. . . sure it won’t come to a war,’ Geis was saying.
Everyone has too much to lose.’

Breyguhn said something that ended with,’. . . dying?’

Geis laughed quietly.
Of course,’ he said.
Everybody is. You have to be a little afraid of it just to give your best.’

The voices came from the left edge of the tomb, where the path came up from the overgrown little valley that lay between the hill the tomb stood on and the terrace bordering the house’s lawns and formal gardens. Sharrow rolled quietly over on her front.

`But you . . . you should never act afraid of it,’ Geis said.

Sharrow heard what might have been a hand slapping stone.

This fellow; old Gorko. He might have had nightmares about dying every time he fell asleep for all we know, but he acted like he wasn’t scared of anything. He knew what he wanted and he went out to get it, and even though he knew it was dangerous he didn’t hesitate for a second.’ There was a pause.
He was a great man. A very, very great man. We could learn a lot from him.’

Another pause. Then, `Shall we sit? You look a bit tired.’

`All right.’

`Here; we’ll sit on this.’

Sharrow heard something flap, then a rustle. She wondered whether she should make herself known, or creep over to the edge and look down on her cousin and half-sister. She lay there, undecided.

`You’re so dashing these days,’ Breyguhn said with a small laugh.

‘Ah,’ Geis laughed too. `It’s the uniform.’

`No it isn’t; I’m sure a slob in a uniform is still a slob.’ (Sharrow gritted her teeth; she had said exactly that to Breyguhn a year ago. Breyguhn had disagreed, of course.)

Geis laughed gently again.
Well,’ he said.
There are chaps in the year who could certainly do with a lesson in grooming, I’ll give you that. Some fellows can look untidy the instant after their man’s dressed them to parade spec. Mind if I smoke?’

`Of course not. Is that something else they do in the Navy?’

`Well, it’s not a regulation,’ Geis laughed.

Sharrow heard a click, then smelled shoan smoke; the mild narcotic was banned in Yada and illegal in parts of Caltasp. She wasn’t a great fan of the stuff herself; it didn’t deliver much of a hit and it smelled overly sweet.

`What is that?’

`This? It’s shoan; from Speyr. Harmless stuff; gives you a bit of a buzz, you know.’

`Could I try some?’

`Well, I’m not sure your…’

`What?’

`I’m not sure that you’re old-’

`You were going to say that Daddy wouldn’t approve, weren’t you?’

`Yes. Yes, I was.’

`Well, that doesn’t apply now, does it?’

There was another pause, and what might have been a sigh or a sniff.

‘Brey . . .’ Geis said.

`Oh, give me that.’

After a while Breyguhn coughed, then stopped.

`You sure-’ Geis said.

Breyguhn coughed again. `Woo,’ she said after a few moments.

`You all right?’

`Fine.’

`Look, I haven’t really had a chance to say properly how sorry-’

`Oh, Geis, stop it.’

`I just wanted to say-’

`Don’t! Don’t!’ Breyguhn sobbed, and then there was another rustling sound and Breyguhn said something else but suddenly it sounded muffled.

`There there,’ Geis said gently, so quietly Sharrow could hardly hear.

Oh, Geis,’ Breyguhn said.
You’ve always … I’ve … Ever . . .’ She broke down, sobbing. The sobs became muffled again.

`Brey, Brey. . .’ Geis said softly.

There was silence, then some sounds that Sharrow wasn’t sure were from Geis and Breyguhn or from the grass and bushes around her, moving in the breeze. Then a noise like a moan.

`Brey,’ Geis said, something chiding in his voice.

`Oh, Geis, please; please . . . I want to . . . so much . . .’

What? thought Sharrow. She pulled herself to the edge of the sarcophagus, where she could see the valley path and the bushes on the side of the hill. She glanced over the edge of the tomb.

Geis and Breyguhn were embracing and kissing, both kneeling on Geis’s Alliance Navy uniform cape, spread out on the grass at the side of the tomb. As Sharrow watched, Breyguhn’s hands pulled Geis’s shirt out of his trousers and then disappeared inside them. One of Geis’s hands moved to Breyguhn’s skirted leg and slid slowly upwards as he laid her down on the cape.

Sharrow stared amazed at Breyguhn’s face for a second, then pulled herself away when she realised Brey only had to open her eyes to see her looking down at her.