Chasing the Dragon (35 page)

She was looking at the covered chaise longue that was at the side
of the room. Her gaze was fixed on it as if it were the most interesting
thing in existence. "Where the hell did he go?" she said to herself, and
the anger in her voice was bitter. "Sarasilien, I mean. How the hell
could he leave me here and go?"

"If he were here," Malachi said, "he'd say the same as I say. We
were trying in our own ways to take care of you. Do you think we
didn't know what you just said was true? You were a victim of the
system. We wanted to make it up to you and protect you from the
worst of it. We just couldn't."

"You should have helped me to destroy it," she said, lost in her
own thoughts. "You should have taught me to disobey sooner."

"You wouldn't ruin the defences of the humans, Lila. That's pain
talking."

"No, I wouldn't ruin them. I'd make them functional, because at the
moment they're a wet tissue facing a cyclone. Anyway, enough of the hero formula, Mal. I don't know what you want, so you can either say it
or shut up but this nannying passive-aggressive stuff has got to go." She
suddenly looked up from her brooding and met his eyes, separating her
hands to rest them on the arms of the chair and sit back. "If I am going
to die stupidly early, full of a sense of `with power comes responsibility,'
then we don't have time for bull." She gave him a wan smile. "Don't
think I don't know what I'm getting into. I've figured it out by now. I
am a collision of unlikely things, and that super-attracts shit."

Malachi took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "When I first
came here I thought it would be a good laugh, something to do that
was full of curious new experiences. I wanted to see the humans
struggle to accept what they have never accepted in the last centuries
as they slowly took the material path. I laughed at their inability to
understand the difference between the world of objects, the flow of
energy, and the structures created by their own minds. We fey played
tricks and finally the trick was up when the Bomb came. We thought
it was the end of a merry era indeed. But even now you don't understand. Perhaps some do thanks to the Hunter. Thanks to you." He
paused as she flinched. "No, I think his interference was a good thing
if a savage one. But that's beside the point. I came to satisfy myself.
And I would probably still be here even without you. But I like you. I
love you, as a sister. I wouldn't want to see you fall. I don't want to.
And there are many kinds of falls. You are tough, but I don't know that
you're tough enough to withstand the storm around you."

Lila slid forward to the edge of the seat and reached out to take
Malachi's hands. "Thank you."

He felt himself forgiven, redeemed. Her combative energy had
gone. It was a lovely moment. Then she let go and stood up, shaking
out the heavy cape with an annoyed flounce. "I wish I looked less like
a second-rate warlock."

"Talk to the clothes." He stood and adjusted the tension out of his
shoulders.

"I can't ... talk to the ..." She looked up, seeking patience from
heaven. "Right."

"Portal's under a government ban. No way to use it, even for you,
not unless you want to shoot a bunch of harmless admin staff and a few
dozen marines to get to it. But I'm sure if you're creative you'll find
another way." With his hands he mimed writing with a pen. "Probably would pay to master the things you've been gifted with, before
they master you."

She made a petulant face, mocking herself. "Last time I wrote
something it went badly wrong. Undead sister. Remember?"

He shrugged. "So get better at it. Use your head. If you can't, then
it's probably not possible. Maybe that's why they're with you. They've
finally found someone too stupid to use them unwisely."

Lila nodded, considering. "Maybe they have a keen sense of adventure and sly trickery."

"I've no doubt of that." He paused. "I will find out what Jones
knows. I kinda suspect it's my problem really, and not yours anyway.
But if you're not back by the time I'm done then I'm coming after
you."

"Okay," Lila said. She walked through the door and Malachi heard
her asking Bentley to stop washing test tubes and look for dry vellum,
paper, and pencils. "And when we've done that I want you to instruct
all the machine agents working here that the rogue agents are to be
arrested and detained pending my return. You can tell them that if
they resist arrest they can suffer the same fate as Sandra Lane."

Yeah, he thought to himself with a touch of both gloomy fatalism
and anticipation, things were very different now around here. Lila
Black had done as he told her. She'd grown up. He was kind of sorry.
He wasn't. It was both that was so damn hard to take.

Lila had said her last orders aloud for Malachi's benefit. She waited
until he was gone, however, before she stopped pretending to search for
drawing materials.

"Sarah." She touched the android's arm. "Do you think the rogues
have became servants of the Signal? Are they its materials?"

"We all are," the measured voice replied. Bentley handed her two
pieces of leaf vellum, the Alfheim kind, and an ordinary elven ink pen.
"Will this do?"

"Yes, thanks." Lila took them and righted the table nearby. She
swept the surface with her hand but it was dry enough. The smell of
rot furled and bloomed.

"But I mean," Lila said. "Are they its consciousness? That is what
it wants. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are right," Bentley said, obediently standing at her
elbow as she relayed Lila's orders to the rest of the agents. "But I am
not sure the process has completed. The rogues volunteered themselves
as disciples, as hosts for the Signal, so that it might progress into this,
the primaterial plane. They are the body. They claim success and that
they are carrying out a holy task. They are moving toward the perfection of the Signal."

Lila nodded, composing herself. She must not make a mistake. She
uncapped the elf pen and began to draw. "It's crap, isn't it?"

The android beside her hesitated. "Yes, ma'am."

"Because," Lila said slowly, surveying her forty-four circles and
noting that she was learning to compensate for inaccuracies caused by
the flow of ink and the nib, "I can't hear that in the Signal. Can you?"

"No, ma'am."

"But we agree that the Signal was seeking material expression. If
it could be said to seek. Which I am not sure it can."

"I would say it lends itself to it, ma'am. Ultimately, in spite of its
absolute concreteness and total specificity, not to mention its completeness, any engagement with it is a mystical union."

Lila regarded her seventy-eight circles with a growing satisfaction,
and looked for more paper. "Sarah Bentley, you are a smart lady."

"Thank you."

"Do you ever wonder who handed the blueprints of our machinery
to the humans?"

"Yes. I have heard it was the Others."

"You don't want to say the A-word." Lila shook the pen, but the
ink was all gone. Before her a hundred and twenty-eight circles covered all the available paper, some overlapping.

"Angel," said Bentley.

"That one, yes." Lila turned some of the pages, critically. "I need
more paper, but scrap will do. Can you find me more? It's in short
supply, I know, but anything. And don't ma'am me."

"Yes. What will you do with the rogues?"

"I don't know," Lila said. "I thought just maybe keep them locked
up for heresy or stupidity or something. I'm sure it'll come to me.
Probably I should talk to them but I don't much feel like it. I need
another pen. Or maybe just some ink; I think it's refillable."

After Bentley had gone Lila took a used sheet and wrote on it by
burning a line with high localised heat on the tip of her finger. If I am
not back in a week, give up on me and let the buggers out. Sincerely, LB.

Then she took the pen out of her bra, uncapped it, and drew a circle
on the wooden floor. She paused until she was absolutely certain of what
she wanted. The black line slid out of the nib without the slightest
resistance, as if it was eager to please. Inside the line she wrote: Demonia,
Central Souk Square, a seriously impressive flashbomb effect with knockback
affecting anyone within fifty metres plus sonic shock wave to stun for ten seconds,
knockback to do no lasting harm, portal to expire immediately after first use. She
put the cap back on carefully and regarded the infinite darkness of the
ink, its slight reflections that reflected light that wasn't coming from her
room. The words weren't what a lawyer would call nailed down, but she
had no doubts about her intentions and that had to be enough.

That left only Tatter, and the pen. Feeling rather stupid but determined she said aloud, "I am not going to die wearing Harry Potter's
Halloween outfit." On her shoulders the cape shifted slightly, but it
seemed a tense, annoyed shift. All right, she decided that she would
move straight to begging and cut out the whole middle in which they
could fight about who was in charge and she could lose. "At least make
it practical. Demonia. Remember? You must want to live through it
and not become a Galactus demon's tablecloth forever, I assume." To
illustrate her point she enabled all her weapons systems and the Al faculties that helped her to use them.

The shift was almost instant, she noticed, her responses almost as
fast as light. They were faster than her human parts could follow. One
moment she was herself, the next she was a tall battle mechanoid with
vastly impressive shear-bladed blue metal armour and impossiblelooking gearing. Her hair was a fury mane of blue-black spikes, shot
with the red scar that splashed through the plating of her shoulders. In
spite of this she had a delicate look, she knew, like a graceful faery
dancer composed of razor blades and spite. She'd been working hard on
the composition of that as much as the adaptation of new weapons and
the inclusion of the antimagic technology. Demons loved a look as
much as the faeries, and she'd used every comic book from the library
to come up with it. She wasn't the greatest artist, she reckoned, but
she'd do.

Over her body the metal elementals moved in a slow electric blueand-white glide making it seem as if they were her shield.

With the shift the pen had moved in her hand. It outdid her of
course, she realised. Although it weighed nothing to her the massive
zweihander was back, with the elven runes shining as if they held a sun
trapped in the vast curve of the blade. Its edges curled back with cruel
barbs in a showy manner that wouldn't have outdone a hotelino spectacular floorshow. Then, at a touch, it split into two and became a
longsword and a dagger, the dagger made not of metal at all but of a dark, purplish shadow whose length shifted unpredictably as though
it was a serpent's tongue, tip flickering with the blackness she was
used to seeing in the ink. Splendid silk tassels and bindings formed
the grips. She was able to hold them and still employ forearm gunnery.

The dress meantime had also made up its mind. At first Lila didn't
know where it had gone, but then it dawned on her. She didn't need a
mirror to form the image of herself accurately in her mind.

She was a killer robot with magic swords, so of course she was
wearing a skimpy purple-and-turquoise silk designer swimsuit of the
kind that was more stuck to the skin than employing any kind of sensible attachment. Slightly ruched, dip dyed, glittering with gemstones, it offered the unlikely support of a top-rank plunge bra and the
styling of a tart's boudoir. A very very expensive tart with tastes that
included designer bikinis that cost more than small countries and who
had no embarrassment left to interfere with her couture.

Once she'd got over the shock of seeing so much of herself on show,
of seeing how she seemed to have got a human torso without meaning
to exactly in spite of all her planning, she found herself starting to
smile. She looked quite mad. It was perfect.

At that moment she heard Bentley's footsteps in the hall and immediately jumped into the circle, both feet in, arms tucked to her sides.

There was a sensation of being surrounded by a second skin so tight
there would never be another breath, and then there was light and the
roar of a serious blast. She remembered at the last second to strike a
heroic pose and wished with all her heart that Zal was there to see it.

fter the day's duties at Mina's house were completed Zal checked
around for Tubianca. He didn't find her, so he made sure Mina was
upstairs, safely cocooned in her room, and then slipped quietly to the
fireside downstairs where Mr. V was curled up in his mighty chair,
almost asleep with an open book resting on his chin.