Against A Dark Background (4 page)

She climbed onto the hydrofoil, slung her legs inside the footwell and pulled the control wheel down. ‘I don’t think I want your services, machine.’

‘Ah, now, wait a moment, Lady Sharrow . . .

She flicked a few switches; the hydrofoil came to life, lights lighting, beepers beeping. ‘Thanks, but no.’

‘Just hold on, will you?’ The machine sounded almost angry.

‘Look,’ she said, starting the hydrofoil’s engine and making it roar. She shouted: ‘Tell Geis thanks . . . but no thanks.’

‘Geis? Look, lady, you appear to be making certain assumptions about the identity of-’

‘Oh, shut up and push me out here, will you?’ She gunned the engine again, sending a froth of foam from the stern of the little boat. Its front foil levered down, knifing into the waves.

The beachcombing machine nudged the hydrofoil forward into the water. ‘Look, I have something to confess here-’

‘That’s enough.’ She smiled briefly at the beachcomber. ‘Thank you.’ She switched the boat’s main lights on, creating a glittering pathway which swung across the waves.

‘Wait! Will you just wait?’

Something in the machine’s voice made her turn to look at it.

A section of the beachcomber’s battered front casing swung up and back to reveal a red-glowing interior bright with screens and read-outs. Sharrow frowned; her hand went to her jacket pocket as a man’s head and shoulders appeared from the compartment.

He was young, muscular-looking in a dark T-shirt, and quite bald; the red light threw dark shadows across his face and over eyes which looked gold in the half-light. The skin on his smoothly reflecting head looked coppery.

‘We have to-’ he began, and she heard both the mechanised voice of the beachcomber and the man’s own voice.

He plucked a tiny bead from his top lip.

‘We have to talk,’ he said. There was a slick bassiness about his voice Sharrow knew she’d have found immensely attractive when she’d been younger.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she said, flicking a couple of switches in the hydrofoil’s cockpit without taking her eyes off him, or her other hand from the gun in her pocket.

‘Somebody who needs to talk to you,’ the young man said, baring his teeth in a winning smile. He gestured down at the casing of the beachcombing machine. ‘Sorry about the disguise,’ he said with a slightly embarrassed, deprecating gesture. ‘But it was felt-

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No; I don’t want to talk to you. Goodbye.’

She tugged the controls, sending the hydrofoil nudging round on a pulse of foam, swamping the front of the beachcomber; water splashed over the hatch’s lip into the machine’s interior.

‘Careful!’ the young man shouted, leaping back and glancing down. ‘But, Lady Sharrow!’ he called desperately. ‘I have something to put to you-’

Sharrow pushed the throttle away from her; the ‘foil’s engine rasped and the little boat surged out from the glass shore. ‘Really?’ she shouted back. ‘Well, you can put it-’

But something obscene was lost to the thrashing water and the screaming exhausts. The craft roared out to sea, rose quickly onto its foils, and raced away.

Issier was the main island of the Midsea archipelago, which lay a thousand kilometres from any other land near the centre of Phirar, Golter’s third largest ocean.

The little arrowhead hydrofoil swung out from the island’s glass western shore and headed north, for Jorve, the next island in the group. It docked half an hour later in a marina just outside Place Issier II, the archipelago’s largest town and administrative capital.

Sharrow woke an apologetic guard in the marina office and left a note for the harbour master telling him to put the hydrofoil up for sale. She collected her bike, then took the east coast road north. She left her helmet off, driving in plain goggles with the wind fierce in her hair; the cloud overhead was fraying, letting moonlight and junklight spread a grey-blue wash over the fields and orchards outside the town.

She switched the bike’s lights off, driving fast and leaning hard round the open, sweeping curves of the gradually climbing road, its surface a faint snaking ribbon of steel blue unwinding in front of her. Ravines beyond the crash-barriers gave brief glimpses of the rock-ragged coast beneath, where the ocean swell terminated in glowing white lines of surf. She only put her lights on when other traffic approached, and thrilled each time to the heart-stopping sensation of total darkness in the instant after she killed the old bike’s fights again.

An hour after she had stood on the glass shore of Issier, she arrived at the solitary, turreted house on the cliff where she lived.

‘Sharrow, you can’t do this!’

‘You mean, You can’t do this to me,’ she muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She took a camera the size of a little finger from a dressing-table drawer and clipped it into an interior pocket of the bag she’d packed.

‘Sharrow!’

She frowned, turning away from the bag lying open on the big round bed in the big round bedroom which faced out to sea. ‘Hmm?’ she said.

Jyr looked distraught; he had been crying. ‘How can you just leave?’ He threw his arms wide. ‘I love you!’

She stared at him. The pale areas of his face looked reddened; the fashion on the island that summer had been for black-white skin like camouflage, and Jyr - convinced he suited the style seemed determined to remain two-tone for the whole year.

She pushed past him, disappearing into her dressing-room to reappear with a pair of long gloves which she added to the pile of clothes in the overcrowded bag.

‘Sharrow!’ Jyr shouted, behind her.

‘What?’ she said, frowning, one hand at her mouth tapping her teeth as she looked down at the bag, deep in thought. She had booked a ticket on a westbound flight leaving early the next morning, called her lawyer and her business partners to arrange a meeting, and contacted her bank to rearrange her finances. Still, she was sure she’d forgotten something.

‘Don’t go!’ Jyr said. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I love you!’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said, kneeling on the bed to pull the bag closed.

‘Sharrow,’ Jyr said quietly behind her, a catch in his voice. ‘Please. . .’ He put his hands on her hips. She knocked his hands away, grunting as she struggled with the catches on the bag.

She forced the bag closed and stood up. Then she was whirled round as Jyr grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Stop doing this to me!’ he shouted. ‘Stop ignoring me!’

‘Well, stop shaking me!’ she shouted.

He let her go and stood there, quivering, his eyes puffy. His hair, all white, looked dishevelled. ‘At least explain,’ he said. ‘Why are you doing this? Why do you just have to go?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Tell me!’

‘All right!’ she snapped. ‘Because,’ she said, talking quickly, ‘once upon a time, long ago and far away, there was a young girl who’d been promised to a great temple by her parents. She met a man - a duke -and they fell in love. They swore nothing would separate them, but they were tricked and she was taken to the temple after all.

‘The Duke came to rescue the girl; she escaped and brought with her the temple’s greatest treasure. They married and she bore the Duke twins: a boy and a girl. In an attempt to get the treasure back, agents of the faith killed the Duke and his son.

‘The treasure was hidden - no-one knows where - and the Duchess swore she’d avenge the deaths of her husband and child in any way she could, and to oppose the faith at every turn. She swore the surviving twin, a daughter, and all her descendants to the same oath.

‘The faith responded in kind; a prophet had a vision and decided that the Messiah couldn’t be born until the faithful had their treasure back, or the female line of the. family had died out; whichever came first. And however it worked, it had to happen by the time of the decamillenium.’

She studied Jyr’s tearful, uncomprehending face for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Well,’ she said, exasperated, ‘you did ask.’

‘Take me with you,’ Jyr whispered.

‘What? No:

‘Take me with you,’ he repeated, taking one of her hands in his. ‘I’ll do anything for you. Please.’

She pulled her hand away. ‘Jyr,’ she said, looking levelly into his eyes. ‘It was a good summer and I had a lot of fun; I hope you did too. But now I’ve got to go. Stay in the house until the lease runs out, if you want.’

He slapped her.

She stared at him, her ears ringing, the impact of the slap like an echo on her face. He’d never hit her before. She didn’t know what she found more amazing; the fact he’d managed to surprise her, or that he’d even thought of trying to hit her in the first place.

He stood in front of her, his eyes wide.

She shook her head, smiled brightly and said, ‘Oh, boy,’ then punched him hard in the jaw. Jyr’s head snapped back; he fell crashing into the dressing-table behind, scattering bottles, pots, jars and brushes. He slid to the floor; perfumes and lotions spilled from smashed bottles and made dark stains on the tiles around him.

She turned, picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She hoisted a small satchel from the side of the bed and put it over her other shoulder. Jyr moaned, lying face down on the floor. The room began to reek of expensive perfume.

She inspected the knuckles on her left hand, frowning. ‘Get out of my house, now,’ she said. ‘Phone?’ she spoke to the room.

‘Ready,’ chimed a voice.

‘Stand by,’ she said.

‘Standing by.’

She tapped Jyr on the backside with one boot. ‘You’ve got two minutes before I call the police and report an intruder.’

`Oh gods, my jaw,’ Jyr whimpered, getting to his knees and holding his chin. The back of his head was bleeding. Bits of broken glass fell from him as he stood, shakily. She took a couple of steps away from him, watching him carefully. He almost fell again, then put one hand out to the dressing-table to steady himself. ‘You’ve broken my jaw!’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Not with an upper cut.’ She glanced at the bedside clock. ‘That’s you down to about a minute and a half now, I’d say.’

He looked at her. ‘You fucking heartless bitch.’ His voice was quite steady.

She shook her head. ‘No, Jyr, I never liked it when you talked dirty.’ She looked away from him. ‘Phone?’

‘Standing by.’

‘Please call the local p-’

‘All right!’ Jyr roared, then winced, and held his jaw as he stumbled for the door. ‘I’m going! I’m going! And I’m never coming back!’ He hauled the bedroom door open and slammed it shut behind him; she listened to his feet hammering down the stairs, then heard the front door crash shut; the turret shook around her. A final slam was his car door, followed by the noise of the engine, whining away into the night.

She stood very still for a while, then her shoulders dropped a little, and her eyes closed.

She swayed slightly, swallowed, then breathed out as she opened her eyes again, sniffing. She wiped her eyes, took another deep breath and walked away from the bed. She stopped briefly at the dressingtable, setting a couple of bottles upright again.

‘Standing by,’ said the room.

She looked at her reflection in the table’s mirror. `Cancel,’ she said, then drew one finger through a thick pool of perfume on the cable’s wooden surface, and dabbed the scent behind her ears as she walked towards the door.

She drove the bike back into town, helmet on, nightsight activated and all lights blazing.

She arrived at the tall town house which was the home of the Bassidges, the couple who owned the other two thirds of the tropical fish business. Her lawyer was already there; she signed the necessary papers selling her share in the shop to them. She’d left her personal phone in the cliff house, knowing it would make her too easy to trace. After her lawyer had returned home and the Bassidges had gone to bed she sat down at the house’s antique desk-terminal and stayed there until dawn, taking a couple of zing-tabs to keep herself awake as she attempted to catch up on eight years of Antiquities news and datagossip.

There were numerous outstanding contracts for the Universal Principles: several from universities, several more from big Corps known to invest in high-value Antiquities, a few from wealthy individual collectors who specialised in lost Unique books, and one anonymous contract. The latter offered the best financial advance, though only for Antiquities investigators with acceptable track records. She was almost tempted to draft a tender and mail is to the anonymous box number, but there was too much to settle first.

She suspected she’d end up looking for the book one way or the other. According to one of the more pervasive rumours that had circulated within the Dascen family and its attendant septs in the chaotic aftermath of her grandfather Gorko’s fall, the whereabouts of the last Lazy Gun - the one stolen from the Huhsz by the Duchess seven generations earlier and hidden after the Duke’s death - had been discovered by Gorko’s agents and its location somehow recorded in the Unique book named the Universal Principles, which itself had been missing for a lot longer.

To Sharrow, the rumour had always seemed just mad enough to be true, though how you could leave a message in something which everybody agreed had vanished centuries earlier, she understood no better than anybody else.

At appropriate times during the night, to allow for the time differences involved, she phoned the Francks in Regioner, left a message for Miz in the Log-Jam, failed to track down anybody by the name of Cenuij Mu in what passed for a city data base in Lip City, and filed a visitation request with the Truth Dissemination Service of the Sad Brothers of the Kept Weight, in the Sea House, Udeste province, Caltasp.

She checked on the last Lazy Gun’s official Antiquities status too, just for hell of it. There was, of course, only the one contract extant, from the World Court, offering a graded reward schedule for information leading to the weapon’s safe apprehension and an equally impressive sliding scale of steep fines and grisly punishments for anybody harbouring such information and not releasing it to the Court.

Nine years earlier there had been tens of contracts; a unique one from the Huhsz which specifically wanted the Gun taken from them by $harrow’s family over two hundred years earlier, and all the rest, which just wanted a Lazy Gun. She and the rest of the team had taken up one of the most lucrative anonymous contracts which required the capture or destruction of either Gun. They had fulfilled the contract but to this day none of them knew who it had been who’d paid them (or paid all but one of them; Cenuij Mu had refused his share after the Gun wiped a large part of Lip City off the map).